That'll Be the Day

That'll Be The Day

1958

Betty

After today Betty Hemley would forever associate the scent of chrysanthemums with the shock of seeing again that face. Which was a pity because she loved these stately flowers. Unlike carnations, which always reminded her of weddings and funerals, events she disliked with equal loathing, chrysants, as she liked to call them, were vibrant with colour and positively bounced with vigour. She loved their large showy blooms in golden yellow, pink, bronze or brilliant white, they were perfect for flower arrangements being erect and strong stemmed, a flower to admire. Now, whenever she looked at these beautiful plants she would be reminded of this long-dreaded moment when her past came back to haunt her.

‘Are you okay Mam? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

She heard the voice of her own daughter as if coming from a great distance and fear bloomed in her like a stain of hot blood. It was imperative that Lynda didn’t see him standing there. Who knows how she might react?

Yet Betty could do nothing to prevent it, could neither speak nor move. She’d been putting the finishing touches to the display preparatory to making a sale, now she was grasping the flower far too tightly but felt powerless to unclasp her fingers. It was as if frozen fire were flowing through her veins, her limbs oddly flaccid and unresponsive, her brain a mush of confused emotion.

She was transfixed by the shock of seeing that all too familiar face, all other sounds from the bustling market around her fading into insignificance. Betty could hear nothing but his voice: whining, complaining, criticising, coming back to her like an echo through the years, hearing again those pitiful excuses, those bare-faced lies.

Maybe he was a ghost. Maybe he hadn’t just walked across the cobbles of Champion Street and smiled at her with that sardonic curl to his lip. Perhaps she was hallucinating and he wasn’t standing leaning against the wall of the Dog and Duck at all, watching her with those nasty beady eyes of his. Perhaps he didn’t even exist except in her fevered imagination.

This might all be some sort of nightmare because of that cheese she’d eaten for her supper. She might still be at home in bed, not seated at her stall surrounded by her beloved flowers which she’d risen before dawn to buy, spending hours arranging them in an array of metal vases and baskets.

Yet even in the nightmare Betty was able to savour every nuance of their differing scents: some sweet and cloying, others earthy and moist, or spicy and herblike, each one an individual and at this instant overwhelming her senses.

Betty had never been the kind of person prone to sudden attacks of panic. She prided herself on being a calm, unruffled sort of woman, steady and easy-going, although she was willing to take anyone on if she saw someone being bullied or picked on. She was a familiar figure on Champion Street Market where she had run her flower stall ever since before the war, bringing up her two children largely single-handed. She had always believed that although human nature may be frail, if you keep your heart strong and your spirits high everything will come out right in the end.

But who could blame her if she was scarred by a bitter resentment, against her own ex-husband in particular? Ewan Hemley had totally messed up her life, and it looked as if he might be about to do the same again.

The stem of the chrysanthemum snapped between her fingers and sound rushed in upon her like an express train. People talking and laughing, traffic roaring by, a baby crying, yet still Betty couldn’t move.

‘Oh, you’ve broken it,’ Lynda said, taking the crippled flower from her useless fingers. ‘It’s not like you to be so clumsy. Do you think I should call a doctor, Judy? Mam looks like she’s about to keel over.’

‘I’m not sure. Mrs Hemley, are you all right? Can I get you something? A glass of water perhaps?’

‘Do you want to take a tea break, Mam? Why don’t you go over to Belle's caff for a cuppa?’

Betty became vaguely aware of a gentle touch upon her arm, and of anxious voices drowned out by the pounding of her own heart. She forced her trembling lips into a smile. Sweet strong tea sounded good. That’s what you took for shock, wasn’t it?

‘Aye, I might just do that, love. I am feeling a bit queer. Maybe I’m coming down with a cold. ‘

‘Let me help you, Mrs Hemley. You seem a bit unsteady on your feet.’

Betty looked up into a pair of gentle, cornflower blue eyes fringed by long, curling lashes. Judy Beckett, one of her regulars. The poor girl really should take better care of herself instead of always looking faintly worn out and a bit shabby, as if she’d thrown her clothes on or bought them at Abel’s second-hand stall.

But then her husband Sam who ran the ironmongery shop inside Champion Street Market, bought her a suspicious number of bouquets. In Betty’s opinion their marriage was almost bound to fail so was it any wonder if she always looked so gaunt and ill?

All of human nature passed by Betty’s stall, the good and the bad, allowing her the opportunity to speculate, rightly or wrongly, on the lives of her neighbours: to share in their celebrations, their weddings, birthdays and special occasions, and in the sadder events of their lives such as hospital visits and funerals, their squabbles, their guilt, and even their apologies.

She knew that the brand new marriage of Amy and Chris George had almost been destroyed by a family feud, yet when Amy presented her young husband with a baby daughter, he bought her the biggest basket of flowers Betty had ever seen in her life. Cost him a small fortune that he could ill afford, but then Chris was that rare breed - a loving husband.

Unlike Leo Catlow, for instance, owner of a large distribution depot down on the docks and occupying the big house on the corner of Champion Street. He was a demanding, restless, deep thinking sort of man who called at her stall once a month to buy carnations for his mother, yet rarely bought his wife so much as a single rose. Nor will he, Betty construed, until she did her duty and provided him with a son.

Hadn’t she also watched with a heavy heart as the young hopefuls came courting her lovely daughter Lynda, roses in hand? And seen how the poor girl spurned each and every one of them, not able to trust a man after her own father had so callously deserted her.

Men! Betty didn’t have a good word to say for any of them. If only all marriages could be happy, and divorce rendered unnecessary.

That’ll be the day . . .

Betty directed her level brown-eyed gaze across the street. He was still there, looking as cocky as ever. Damn him to hell!

‘Mrs Hemley? Can you hear me, Betty? Did you forget to have breakfast in your rush to get up early to collect the flowers this morning, and then were too busy preparing them to find time? You’re looking really washed out. I think a cup of tea would do you a power of good.’

Judy was petite and pretty with a warm easy smile. Betty liked her a lot and often enjoyed a chat with her about her two children, and encouraged her in her hobby of oil painting which she did so well. It was Judy who had wanted the chrysanthemums. She called at the stall every Friday morning to buy flowers for the weekend, as she was doing today. Often one of Betty’s specially made basket arrangements which Sam fondly imagined she did herself.

Husbands, so demanding of wives and yet so flawed themselves. Useless lumps the lot of them, in Betty’s opinion. Again she glanced across the street but the pavement was empty this time. The unwelcome intruder, if indeed he’d been there at all, had gone.

Once inside the café taking sips of scalding sweet tea, Betty began to feel faintly foolish. This was no way for a middle aged mother to behave, coming over all peculiar because of some imagined sighting of an ex-husband. She raked blunt-tipped fingers through cropped grey hair, rubbed the flat of her hand over the soft pads of her cheeks as if to wake herself from some nightmare, then sank her face into her hands with a weary sigh. If that really had been Ewan Hemley and not a figment of her imagination, then it couldn’t be good news, not good news at all.

Judy appeared at her side. ‘I’ve brought you a slice of toast and marmalade as well. I often feel a bit odd myself if I’ve forgotten to eat when I’m painting.’

Betty pulled herself out of her reverie and managed to find her voice sufficiently to thank the young woman for her thoughtfulness.

‘Yer a good lass. That might be just the ticket.’

If only it could be so simple. If only a slice of toast warmly offered, could resolve all her problems. Betty knew in her heart that she hadn’t suffered a nightmare, nor an hallucination brought on by her fondness for Welsh Rarebit.

As she nibbled on the toast, the constriction in her throat making it hard for her to swallow, Betty kept glancing anxiously about the busy market hall, worried lest the ghost from her past might again appear like the demon king in a bad pantomime.

Ewan Hemley, the husband from whom she’d escaped and finally divorced in nineteen forty-five, seemed to be back in her life and that could mean only one thing. Trouble!

What could he be doing on Champion Street Market? She hadn’t set eyes on him in thirteen years or more, so why would he suddenly turn up now?

Money! Why else?

Was he still around? Was he following her now that he’d found her again? Yet everything looked perfectly normal: stacks of yellow cheeses beneath striped awnings, women in headscarves buying strings of Ramsay’s pork sausages or patiently queuing for one of Poulson’s pies. There were the Higginson sisters gently squabbling over how best to display a hat. Racks of gaily coloured skirts standing before the fabric stall and Winnie Watkins as was, Mrs Barry Homes as she should now rightly be addressed since her recent marriage, skilfully measuring out several yards of net curtaining for a customer.

Winnie smiled across at Betty, giving a little jerk of her head by way of acknowledgement and making the bob on her woollen hat quiver. She was rarely seen without that hat, even on a warm September day like today.

Betty put back her head and stared up at the blue sky through the dome of windows high in the iron frame of the Market Hall roof. The sunlight slanting in was as bright and golden as any other ordinary day. Everything perfectly normal, exactly as the market had always looked in all the long years she had occupied it.

Yet for Betty, nothing would ever be normal again.

What if Jake, her nineteen year old son, still filled with anger even after all this time, and blaming her for his father’s apparent desertion, returned unexpectedly early from his delivery round and discovered what was going on? Lord above, that would never do. That would be even worse than Lynda finding out.

Yet if Ewan Hemley was indeed back in her life, how could she keep it from them? He was still their father after all, even if he was a pain in the backside and hell-bent on making trouble.

Betty drew in a long shaky breath. Goodhearted and caring she might still be but not so trusting nor half so stupid as she once was. That innocent young girl who had been so easily taken in by a man’s charm and seen her life ruined as a result, was long gone. Betty had seen too how he’d damaged her two children, and had made a private vow to put him six feet under rather than allow anything of the sort to happen to them ever again.

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