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Fools Fall in Love

1956

1

Patsy

It was even noisier than usual on Champion Street Market: the stall-holders calling out their wares, the Salvation Army band performing their normal Saturday morning routine, buses roaring by, splashing through puddles and soaking traders and customers alike.  A brisk October wind slapping the wet canvas over the market stalls, making them sound like ships in full sail.

            So much noise and bustle that no one paid any attention as a young woman walked by, glancing longingly at the fish stalls with their colourful array of pink salmon, glistening white cod and plaice, yellow smoked haddock, the slate blue of cockles, and glistening heaps of whelks and oysters.

‘Pair of kippers for threepence, chuck.’

‘Buy your pippins here, love.  Best Cox’s orange pippins in all of Manchester.’

She lifted her, elfin face to smell the tantalising aroma of the sea, so far away from her now, mingling with hot baked potatoes, fried onions, freshly baked bread, and chocolate from Pringle’s Chocolate Cabin.  Her stomach growled.

The girl showed little interest in a stall decked out in witches’ hats and capes, red feather boas and masks, obviously in preparation for Hallowe’en at the end of the month.  But on reaching Barry Holmes’s fruit and veg stall she lingered for a long, telling moment over the bright globes of fresh oranges, the bloom of cauliflowers, red cabbage, luscious pears and plums, and rosy tomatoes, her cornflower blue gaze resting hungrily upon the shining red apples.

            ‘Go on, you can have one, chuck.  I’m in a generous mood today,’ Barry said.

            She glanced up at him, surprised and embarrassed that he should catch her looking, holding one clenched fist against the hollow of her empty stomach as if willing it to resist.  Then she cocked him a cheeky grin and swiftly slid an apple into her pocket.  She might be hungrier still later, if she didn’t find what she was looking for.

            ‘Know of any jobs going, mister?’ she asked, since he’d proved to be friendly.

            ‘On this market, in this weather?  You’ll be lucky.’

            She laughed again.  ‘You sound like Al Read.’

Her long blonde hair, held back from her face by a wide Alice band, fell to her shoulders as straight as the rain that had been coming down in torrents all morning, and every bit as wet.  It had thankfully stopped now, much to the market traders’ relief and a rare glint of sunlight illuminated the girl’s translucent complexion, making the elfin features appear all the more delicate.  Barry thought she seemed a bit sad and pinched looking, in sore need of a good meal, with the faintest blue shadows beneath her lower lashes.  Yet there was something in the blue eyes as they looked about with such lively curiosity, something piquant and challenging in their sparkling depths, a radiance, that had he been twenty years younger he’d have fallen in love with on the spot.

‘You could try Belle's cafe, there’s rarely a week goes by when one of her waitresses hasn’t upped and left.  But then that’s because she’s the very  devil to work for.’

A voice rose above the general din, loud as a fog horn.  ‘Fran!  Amy!  Where the flamin’ hell have you girls got to?  I’ll batter your brains in when I get my hands on you, you great lummocks.’

Barry snorted with laughter.  ‘That’s Big Molly.  Take no notice, her bark is worse than her bite.  You could always try her pie stall.  She’s got two daughters of her own who are supposed to help out, mind, but she might be glad of the change.  They give her a lot of grief one way or another.  Nice enough girls at heart, but at each other’s throats the whole time.  Like all sisters, I suppose.’

The girl smiled.  ‘Thanks, I’ll maybe give it a try.’  She half turned away, and then seeming to come to a decision returned to Barry’s stall.  ‘I heard there was another pair of sisters here, Higginson, I believe the name is.’

‘Oh, aye, they have the milliner’s stall.  That’s on the inside market, in the market hall.  Pair of spinsters.  Do you know them?’

But she was shaking her head and backing away at the same time.  ‘Thanks - thanks for your help.  I might give them a try too.’

‘Good idea, if you’re fond of hats.’

Barry watched her go, his gaze on the soft tresses of her hair, drying to a silvery fairness in the sun.  It crossed his mind that it would be a pity to hide such beauty under a hat.

Big fat Molly Poulson slid a warm meat and potato pie into a brown paper bag, and, bag in hand, took a step back to yell down a flight of stone steps.  These led to a storeroom below the market hall, to which her daughter Fran had disappeared a good half hour since.

            ‘Get up here this minute, girl, if tha knows what’s good for you.’

Smiling sweetly at her customer, Molly smoothly changed gear to a softer tone.  ‘There y’are chuck, get that down yer neck and it’ll warm the cockles all right,’ before moving on to the next person in the growing queue.

Close to dinnertime, the stall was busy.  ‘Aye, we do have more steak puddings, and no, love, I haven’t the faintest idea what the hangment is taking that girl so long fetching them.  Anyone would think she was making ‘em from scratch, that I didn’t get up at four to bake them meself.’

Sadly, Fran was paying not the slightest attention to her mother, even when she heard her next, full-throated shout.  At that precise moment she was too busy savouring the pleasure of having Eddie Davidson’s tongue down her throat and his long, sensitive fingers squeezing her plump breast.  She gave a low moan, rubbing her hips provocatively against his so she could feel the satisfactory hardness of the bulge in his trousers,

            He paused long enough to curse softly beneath his breath.  ‘You’re a tease, Fran Poulson, that’s what you are? A right little floozy.’

            Fran ran the tip of her pink tongue over lips rosy from his kisses, laughing when she saw his eyes glaze over with fresh desire.  ‘I can’t imagine what on earth you’re talking about.  I’m nothing but an innocent lass enjoying a bit of a kiss and cuddle.  No harm in that, now is there?’  She lifted a pair of fine eyebrows, widening her amber eyes in pretend outrage.  ‘Are you saying you want summat more than kisses and a quick feel?  Well, strike me down with a feather.  What could you have in mind?’

‘I’ll show you what I have in mind.’  He pushed her back against the rough brick of the wall, trapping softly rounded arms above her head with a   neat flick of one hand, while the other pushed up her skirt.  He stopped her squeals with his mouth as he homed in on his target.

Out in the market, Molly was beginning to lose patience.  Not so the customer, who knew that she’d find no better steak and kidney puddings, not in a ten mile radius, than she could buy here at Poulsons.  ‘I’m sure they’ll be worth waiting for,’ she said with a smile, attempting to pacify Big Molly.

It didn’t work.  Hands on hips and raising her voice several decibels so that she could easily have been mistaken for a sergeant major yelling at recruits on parade, her large frame affording her excellent lung capacity, Molly let rip one more time.  Calling first for one daughter, and then the other, she lifted up her several chins, cocked her head to one side and waited, as if expecting them to materialise up through the cobbles beneath her feet.

This was her usual way of dealing with recalcitrant family members, assuming she wasn’t near enough to take actual physical reprisals against whoever was disobeying her; a state of affairs her two daughters and one son preferred to avoid, if at all possible.  They were more than ready to cross their mother, and did so on a regular basis at the least opportunity, but never when they were within grabbing distance.

‘That lass should be here,’  Molly informed her customer, outrage in her deep booming voice.  ‘Right beside me at this pie stall when there’s work to be done.  But then, when was that little madam ever where she was supposed to be?  Bane of my life, daughters.  If it’s not one, it’s the other.’

The woman took one look at Molly’s fierce glare and suddenly began to go off the whole idea of steak and kidney puddings.  ‘Look, I’ll come back tomorrow, shall I?  We can have summat else for us supper tonight.’

But Molly was having none of that.  She wasn’t prepared to allow the customer to escape, nor lose the business from the queue lining up behind her.  Didn’t the appetising aromas from her stall bring them from miles around?

‘Don’t you fret, love, she’ll come this time if I have to drag her up by her hair.  Fran!  Are you making your last will and testament or what?  ‘Cause you’ll need one when I get me hands on you.  How long are you going to be down there fetching them puddings?  I’ve customers waiting.’

            Her mother’s voice buzzed in her ears like an angry bee as Fran’s excitement mounted, the weight of her lover’s body leaving her breathless, although, disappointingly, he’d stopped kissing her now.  He had both hands on her buttocks and was trying to lift her on to him, which wouldn’t be easy since she was no lightweight.

A part of Fran knew it was in her interest to obey, Big Molly not being the kind of mother who was easy to ignore.  Oh, but didn’t she fancy Eddie like crazy?  And he certainly seemed to like her, so to hell with her mother.

‘Get on with it, Eddie, we’ve just time for a quick one.’

And it wouldn’t be the first time.  She was no shrinking virgin, and at twenty-one why should she be?  Besides, Eddie was nothing if not skilled.  It wouldn’t take Fran more than a minute to reach satisfaction.  That was the nice thing about him, he was very flexible.  He could take his time and linger over their love making, or be as swift and efficient as the situation required.

Fran had every intention of escaping Molly, and the ties of home life,  and finding a place of her own now that she was of age.  Just as soon as she could get a bit of cash saved up.  She had plans for her future, and they didn’t include spending her days slaving away on a market stall.  She’d happen have a business of her own one day, where she could make other folk do the running round for her while she sat back and pocketed the cash.

What’s more, she had absolutely no intention of tying herself down with one man; of donning the chains of matrimony and sinking into the oblivion of domesticity.  Fran shuddered at the prospect.

So it hadn’t come as too great a shock when she’d learned, quite by chance, that Eddie was already married.  Fran believed that she’d taken it really rather well, considering he’d lied to her for some weeks on the subject.  But in all honesty she hadn’t been in the slightest bit disappointed, or concerned, and if people saw her as a trollop for that, then let them.  The old fuddy-duddies could think what they liked.  Mam, Dad, and her stupid sister Amy too.

Fran’s thoughts were interrupted by the heavy tread of her mother’s feet on the stone step, and she instantly decided that perhaps this was neither the place nor the time, after all.  Besides, best not to let Eddie think her too easy, however willing she might be for a bit of the other. 

            ‘Gerroff!’ she said, as if he were about to violate her against her wishes.  ‘Get yer hands out of me knickers, you bad boy.  Who do you think I am, some cheap tart?’

Pushing him firmly away, Fran tossed back her bleached blonde curls, straightened the short tight skirt that had crept up her plump thighs in the excitement of the tussle, and pinged her bra straps back into place.  Then reaching up, just to show she wasn’t really cross with him, she grabbed him by the chin and gently bit his lower lip.  ‘See you later, alligator.’

‘Christ, Fran, you can’t leave me like this!’

Laughing delightedly, she snatched up the tray of steak puddings and skipped up the steps while Eddie flopped against the wall with a low, agonised groan, knowing he’d have to stay there until certain parts of his anatomy had returned to normal.  He was beginning to wonder why he’d ever got himself involved with the stupid cow in the first place.  There were plenty of other women just as willing, and much less likely to blow hot and cold on him.  Even Josie, his sad neglected wife, was less trouble than this, and didn’t require feeding in posh restaurants or tanking up on brandy and Babycham before she agreed to open her legs.

Molly, in no mood to wait a moment longer, met Fran on the stairs.  Snatching the tray from her daughter’s hands, she dropped it on to the stall with a hissed, ‘I’ll speak to you later, madam.’  Then catching sight of a tousled head of blonde hair, held in place by an Alice band, bent over her pies, she snapped, ‘Can I help you?  Only, there’s a queue back there, if you haven’t noticed.’

‘I was only looking.’

‘If you’ve touched one of them pies, that’ll cost you a tanner.’

‘I haven’t got a tanner.’

‘Well, take your nose away then.’

The girl in the Alice band backed off a pace, but the moment Molly moved away to serve the next customer, she snatched up a pie, turned tail and set off at a run across the cobbled setts, Molly Poulson’s screech of outrage resounding in her ears.

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