by Annie Murray
Aunt Hatt looked across at Georgie as if to say, You talk some sense into him. But Georgie stayed where he was, a solemn expression on his face. Surely to goodness, Margaret thought, a chill going through her, Georgie wasn’t thinking of joining up himself? She had become very fond of her kindly, clever cousin with his wry sense of humour. And she knew what it would do to her aunt if Georgie went.
‘My mind’s made up, Mr Watts,’ Den was saying. ‘I’m going to join up tomorrow – only I wanted to let yer know first, like.’
Eb shook his head. ‘It sounds as if I can’t change your mind, lad,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘You’re a good worker – I hate to lose you. But there’ll be a job waiting when you get back.’
There were mutterings of ‘very grateful’ and ‘sorry’ from Den and an awkward silence. Then they heard him say, ‘Will yer tell Daisy I’m going, Mr Watts?’ Those in the office looked at each other and shrugged.
‘All right, yes. Off you go then, lad, if you have to,’ Eb said. ‘Good luck to yer.’
‘Thanks, Mr Watts. I ’ope I’ll make you all proud.’ They heard his footsteps receding towards the back door.
Four
It was only a couple of days before Daisy ran into Mr Carson.
The Vittoria Street School of Jewellery and Silversmithing had been founded as a branch of the Birmingham School of Art in Margaret Street, which was about a mile away in the middle of Birmingham. It was set up for the specialist training of smiths and jewellers and some of the teaching staff, working artists like Mr Carson, gave classes both at Margaret Street and Vittoria Street. Daisy loved being in the school with its long, echoing corridors and rooms full of people bent over benches or tables creating things, many of them very beautiful.
She had just come out of the class she was teaching that afternoon, showing her students the tricky process of shaping a bowl from a flat circle of metal using a raising hammer, and was feeling weary. As she set off along the corridor, amid the milling crowd of students, the relentless sound of hammers banging (something which even now she would still sometimes hear in her sleep) was replaced by their excited chatter. Mr Carson emerged from the Advanced Silversmithing room.
He was no stranger to her: she had known him all her life. But James Carson had not been present in the Vittoria Street School, or indeed in Birmingham, for several years. During this period, Mr Carson had taken up a post at the Sheffield School of Art and he and his wife, Victoria Carson, also an artist, had moved there. Now, Daisy assumed, he had come back to fill some of the gaps left by the war.
Catching sight of her along the corridor, Mr Carson set up a roar from a distance, so that most of the students turned and stared.
‘Is that who I think it is? Miss Daisy Tallis? Daughter of that old genius and curmudgeon Philip Tallis? Ahoy, Daisy Tallis!’
Daisy felt herself lift out of her fatigue as he came sweeping along the corridor like a huge bird, clad in a black cape which billowed out behind. He was a tall, lean man, his hair such a dark brown as to be almost black, parted in the middle and falling in waves down to his collar, his face punctuated by a neat goatee beard and a moustache. He was bareheaded today, though Daisy could remember him appearing in an array of colourful hats and berets of the artistic, rather than conformist, kind. And he always gave off a rushing, exhilarating energy.
Daisy turned hot with blushes at being addressed like this in front of everyone else and her heart was hammering. But she couldn’t help an amused smile spreading across her face. Mr Carson was always so larger-than-life and extreme. Throughout her childhood he had turned up in Chain Street from time to time, booming through the house, demanding to see her father and bellowing at him about why he was such an old hermit and why did he for heaven’s sakes not join the Guild, the meeting place for artists and craftsmen in the area? And Pa always rolled his eyes and grumbled. Come to think of it, she thought, as Mr Carson halted in front of her like a racehorse stalled at a fence, she was not sure even now what the answer was to that question herself. Her Pa could be a mystery sometimes.
Mr Carson’s brown eyes smiled down at her in apparent glee. He seemed so tall, such an awesome figure to her. She tried not to notice the other students gaping as they jostled past along the corridor.
‘Well, well – little Miss Daisy Tallis. I must say you really have grown up in the last – what is it? – five, six years? As lovely and as winning as ever! In fact, my dear, you do look very like your remarkable mother. Except a beautiful golden-haired version of her, of course.’
Daisy blushed even more, but this remark warmed her to the core. It was lovely to meet anyone who had known Mom, who could talk about their memories of her. At home, now that Margaret was there, her mother hardly got a mention out of tact for Pa’s second wife.
Mr Carson reached forward as if to tickle her under her chin as he used to do when she was a little girl, but he seemed to think the better of it. Instead, he straightened up and hooked his thumb between the buttons of his startling, emerald-green waistcoat. In fact, Mr Carson’s bearing and outfit – the bright weskit, his trousers of a mole-coloured velvet, that cape and his whole vivid presence, made Daisy feel dull in comparison, like a pigeon set beside a peacock. And though she had not long passed her twentieth birthday, in this man’s presence she suddenly felt like a child again.
‘Goodness me,’ he said teasingly. ‘I go away for a few years and what do I find? I leave a delightful little girl sitting on the steps of number twenty-four Chain Street, and I come back to find her not only at Vittoria Street and on the teaching roll, but to cap it all, quite grown into a ravishing beauty! Whatever has happened?’
Daisy giggled, flattered but unsure what to make of these remarks. Mr Carson had always been rather overwhelming. But then his face sobered.
‘I hear you’ve been doing exceptionally well, my dear,’ he said. ‘Winning prizes – a veritable little Hester Bateman, or Florence Tallis for that matter, had the poor lady been spared! I always knew you were going to be something rather special. And you are teaching the beginner silversmiths, I gather?’
Daisy felt even more overcome, being likened to such a famous craftswoman as well as gratified that he seemed to have heard about her and what she was doing at the school.
He dropped the teasing tone then and began to speak to her seriously, as to a fellow colleague.
‘Well, I’ll be teaching the more advanced groups. We shan’t be far away from each other. So, my dear, if you need any help of any sort, don’t ever doubt that you can come and ask, will you?’
‘That’s very kind,’ she said, though resolving at the same time that she would never need such help. She was not sure what to say next, and still blushing under his penetrating gaze, she said awkwardly, ‘Well, I’d better go.’
‘Of course.’ He stood back, gave a courtly little bow and let her pass. Daisy hurried away, but glancing back a moment later, she was startled to see that Mr Carson was still standing in the same spot, watching her.
A few days later, Daisy walked out of the main door of the school in Vittoria Street. She had been teaching an afternoon class and her head was still full of the sound of hammering and of the pupils’ questions which she hurried about the class to answer, bending over the not always sweet-smelling lads at their workbenches, instructing them about this and that. There was only a handful of girls. She drew in a deep breath, unwinding after all the demands of the afternoon.
It was already almost dark. The air was damp but the wind had died for the moment, so that smoke hung in the evening air and all the sounds, the clopping hooves of the horse pulling a cart with a few remaining blocks of salt, a mixture of voices and the crash as something was loaded on to another wagon, came to her pure and clear. The streets of the quarter were always busy and now they were full of people bustling along, some on errands, boys with basket carriages and messengers scurrying back and forth. However, despite appearances, in many firms, instead of long hours into the evening during a rush
period, some workshops were shutting up earlier these days – even at dinner time. The war meant a decrease in orders and there was just not enough work coming in.
Daisy was in her own little world, her mind full of the class, of thinking she must go and see her friend May Gordon, who had been at Vittoria Street with her for their five student years and had been taken on in Mr Cuzner’s business in Bournville . . . But another thought intruded as it had begun to do over these days. Mr Carson. She had seen him frequently during his first few days back in the school, careering about the building, people turning to stare.
And today, as they passed each other in the corridor, there was the way he had looked at her. He had met her eye, giving his little bow from the waist. ‘Afternoon, Miss Tallis!’ spoken with a mischievous smile. The man was so full of life and intensity that she could not help being fascinated by him. She was so caught up in all this, walking along now, that she did not notice the young man, among many others in the street, who was standing propped against a lamp post just along from the main doors.
He was nineteen years old, not a great deal taller than Daisy, who was rather tall at five foot six. He had a strong, masculine frame, with broad shoulders and a pale face, the eyes seeming dark in his face by contrast. His cheekbones were prominent, almost as if he had been chipped from a block of stone. Under his cap, a lock of brown hair fell across his forehead. He stood slightly hunched, hands pushed into the pockets of his heavy jacket, and his face wore a serious, watchful expression. When he saw the girl emerge, still absent-mindedly in the process of pushing her hat on to her lovely, pale hair, he felt his heart speed up and with one foot, he pushed himself off from the lamp post.
Daisy was walking along, head down as she pulled her coat round her and fastened the buttons. She appeared to be in a hurry, but then Daisy always did seem in a rush.
‘Dais?’
‘Oh!’ She started, staring at him without recognition for a few seconds. ‘Oh, Den – it’s you! Goodness, you didn’t half make me jump! You off home?’
‘Yeah. No.’ He cursed himself for being flustered, for feeling like a servant compared to her. It was the way he had always felt, coming from the slums of the Jewellery Quarter and her related to the boss – well, sort of. He felt that she was above him, Daisy Tallis, daughter of prosperous Philip Tallis the silversmith. She was like a goddess, so beautiful with that hair, that lovely face of hers, so lovely that he became suddenly aware that his jacket was a couple of sizes too big and he felt rough and awkward in his cap and big boots. But they had known each other so long, him and Daisy, and all he wanted was . . . Well, in fact, what he wanted – her, just her – was too much, and he knew it. ‘Can I talk to you a minute, Dais?’
She stopped, puzzled. She and Den were close in age, though in little else so far as she was concerned. They had played together sometimes as children – Daisy usually in charge – when Margaret and Annie had brought Den and sometimes his little sister Ivy to the house during the Poole family’s hardest times. Since Den had been apprenticed at Watts’s next door, they had seen each other now and then in passing. Daisy had always known that her life was very different from Den’s. His family lived on a broken-down yard off Pope Street. She had been born into a more fortunate situation, and even though she too had lost a parent at a young age, she had not lived in poverty like the Poole family. She was fond of Den like a sort of distant brother, but the truth was she felt rather superior to him. She, Daisy Tallis, was a star of the art school at Vittoria Street, a prizewinner, now a teacher! She scarcely ever gave Den a thought.
Looking at him, amused, she said, ‘Fire away then!’
Den seemed overcome by confusion for a moment and looked down at his boots. But as they stood there, Daisy became suddenly aware of him in a different way. She saw how strong he had become, the muscular thickening of his face and neck, the fact that now, slightly, she had to look up at him. Only then did she suddenly see Den as a man. A light blush rose in her cheeks as his eyes dared to look back up into hers.
‘Come over ’ere,’ he said.
Daisy, unused to being spoken to in this commanding way by Den, followed, bewildered, as he led her into a narrow, mucky entry along the street. She felt her boot land on something squashy and there was a stink of refuse. They were out of the way of passers-by, but were forced to stand uncomfortably close together in the gloom.
‘What is it, Den?’ she said, beginning to feel irritated by being dragged into this stinking alley. She was unsure what to do with her hands, so she clasped them behind her.
He squared himself up and stood tall. ‘I’m joining up.’
Daisy stared at him. When war was declared on 4 August last year, it had seemed a distant thing. Germany, the Schlieffen Plan, Belgium – what did any of these have to do with her? She barely knew where Sarajevo was, this place where it all seemed to have started when someone shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand – someone she had never even heard of. It had made more impact on her when Joseph Chamberlain, the city’s most famous man, had died at the beginning of July. One thing that had brought the war a fraction closer was that they now had a couple of Belgian lads being trained at the Vittoria Street School.
‘What does it really mean, being at war?’ she asked at breakfast, soon after war broke out. She had no memory of any other war.
Her stepmother looked across at her. ‘We don’t really know yet,’ she said. ‘But I do know that that butter and bacon on your plate cost a lot more this week – and that started even before they declared the war. Prices are going up like anything. Sugar’s gone up from tuppence ha’penny a pound to fivepence ha’penny!’
‘I’m going to have to put the whole works on short time,’ her father said. Daisy saw suddenly how pale and worried looking the war had made her father. ‘People are cancelling their orders or sending in wires saying hold them for the time being. We’ve hardly anything coming in. And with so many men rushing to join up there won’t be anyone to do the work soon in any case!’
There had been a great rush into the forces in the autumn, all those lads hurrying into Kitchener’s army, the man’s pointing finger and moustache looking down from walls all over the district. But although a few of the staff had gone from the school and Arthur, the fiancé of Edith who worked in the office, was now in the merchant navy, Daisy knew of no one really close to her who had joined up. And though the war had not ended before Christmas as they had all predicted, surely it couldn’t be long? What was the point in Den going now?
‘What – you mean the army?’ she said.
‘Yeah. Course.’
‘Doesn’t Mr Watts need you at the works?’
‘Nah. Not really. There’s not so much work since it started – we’re on short time.’ Den drew his shoulders back, standing tall. ‘I just feel I gotta go, Dais. Be a man, like.’
Daisy found herself suddenly moved by this. She smiled gently at him, though uncertain whether he could really see her face in the gloom. She released her hands, clasped them in front of her instead.
‘That’s brave, Den. It is. But – what about your mother?’
Den made a slight squirming movement, as if Daisy had touched some nerve in him. Poor Den had been the man of that household since the age of nine.
‘’Er’s working now Florrie’s old enough to go to school, like – and Lizzie and Ivy’ve both got a wage coming in.’
‘Oh, well then . . .’ She was not sure what to say. She was impressed that Den was taking this step – but why was he telling her? Lightly, almost teasing, she said, ‘I suppose you’ll be over in the park, training then? They’re saying it won’t be for long in any case, so I expect you’ll be back soon.’
Den nodded, solemnly. ‘Ar, that’s why I want to go now – before it’s all over . . .’
There was a long silence and Daisy thought she might as well be moving on.
‘I’m impressed, Den,’ she said, starting to turn away. ‘So, are you going tomorrow – to the re
cruiting office?’
‘Yeah – I’ve just told Mr Watts. ’E weren’t very happy. Listen, Dais, don’t go!’
He grasped her arm and she turned back, startled by him touching her. Up close, she suddenly caught the smell of him, sweat and the residue of chemicals that clung to everyone’s garments in the workshops. A man – strong and urgent. For a second she felt almost afraid.
‘What is it?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
‘If I . . . when I go – will yer write to me?’ She could see it cost him courage to say it and she managed to stop the laugh of surprise which tried to escape from her.
‘Write to you? What, me?’
‘Yes,’ he said awkwardly.
She did laugh then, something she often felt sorry for later. ‘Are you going to write back, Den? Can you write?’
‘Course I can,’ he said and she was instantly ashamed that she had injured his pride. But he had not spent much of his time at school. ‘I’m not very good though. But, Dais – will yer promise? There’s no one else’ll write and I’d . . . Well, you’d . . .’ He was stumbling over his words. ‘I know you’d write a good letter. You do everything better’n anyone else. You’re just . . .’
He ran out of words, but even the silence in which he gazed at her was full of intensity and she didn’t know where to look. What was going on? Was he saying that he . . . ? No, surely not – not little Den Poole? Even seeing him suddenly as a man, she could not believe he would be saying something like that. But in the almost darkness, she could sense the intense feeling coming from him, making her feel almost as if her very flesh was being caressed. It was unexpected and unsettling. She did not want to hurt his feelings, but she now felt desperate to get away from him.
‘All right, I’ll write to you if you like,’ she said casually, hoping to goodness she would remember. ‘But I must go home now, Den. Ma’ll wonder where I’ve got to.’