Free Lonely Teardrops (2008) by Freda Lightfoot Page A

daughter claimed to have suffered. Back before the Great War when Rose was growing up you thought yourself lucky if you had a pair of shoes to put on your feet, and managed to get your grubby little hand on anything to eat at some point in a day.
    Joyce might complain bitterly about what she’d lacked as a child in the way of material goods, but she’d never gone hungry, nor ever went short of love. Yet she remained ashamed of her roots, and didn’t take kindly to being reminded of her humble origins, not even by her own mother. She’d rather lie than admit she’d once been a scruffy little tyke with a father who was a dustman. As if that mattered! It was what sort of person you were inside that counted, not how much money you had. Something her daughter couldn’t quite get her fancy head round.
    Rose freely admitted to being a bit frugal herself where money was concerned, some might say to the point of meanness, so she could understand her daughter’s obsession to a degree, although Joyce was doing very nicely in that salon of hers and wasn’t short of a bob or two.
    But then young Grant was every bit as bad, the greedy little tyke. Pity he didn’t have his mother’s work ethic.
    Rose watched with resignation as the boy sidled up to her, beady black eyes as sharp as a ferret’s, breathing noisily, as he’d always suffered sinus problems ever since he was a lad.
    ‘I’m bored with this wedding. Lend us a quid, Nan, then I can go to the dogs.’
    ‘Nay, thee went to the dogs years ago, lad,’ Rose said, in chortling good humour.
    ‘Very funny. Go on, you can spare me ten bob at least.’
    ‘Want, want, want! Do you reckon money grows on trees?’ She gave him five shillings. ‘Don’t spend it all at once.’
    He didn’t trouble to thank her, just slipped away into the crowd, off to the greyhound track or about his own nefarious business.
    Rose didn’t rightly care. Too used to handing out cash when her grandson asked for it, she instantly forgot about him, and glanced over to where Joyce was openly flirting with Joe Southworth, making it very plain what was going on there to anyone who cared to look. Done up like a dog’s dinner she was too, in a cream shantung two piece with a box jacket and tight skirt, almost like a bride herself.
    Rose was wearing a frock she’d had since the thirties. It was magenta silk, a bit faded admittedly but Ron had bought it for her and Rose had always kept it for best so it hardly looked worn. She’d never need to replace it, that was for sure, and why should she? It reminded her of Ron, and his loving, tender generosity towards her. She’d dressed it up with a pair of dangly pink ear-rings and a sparkly brooch. Ron had been fond of buying her the odd trinket, once he could afford to spoil her a bit.
    She could buy her own bits and bobs now, she supposed, should she wish to do so, but liked to be a bit careful with her brass. You were bound to end up that way when you’d never had much in the first place.
    ‘How much do you reckon all this lot cost?’ Rose asked of her granddaughter. There was nothing Rose loved more than trying to assess what someone might have paid for a dress, necklace, house, or whatever. ‘A pretty penny, I should imagine.’
    Rose had quite a bit put by herself, as her Ron had always been prudent, opening a post office savings account, putting money aside in the Oddfellows Friendly Society for their old age, and in case any of them should need a doctor. It’d built up nicely over the years as they’d all been pretty healthy. He’d also been a bit of a gambler, not on the dogs or the gee-gees, but in something called the stock market.
    ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ had been Ron’s motto, along with, ‘We’re right at the bottom of the heap, you and me, lass, so we can only go up. What have we got to lose?’
    Rose hadn’t understood any of it, but it seemed he didn’t lose, at least not too often or too much, and had left her