by Annie Murray
‘What’s her name?’ he asked, sounding stunned.
‘Hester. Well, she’s Hester Florence Margaret – the second names are after my mother and my stepmother.’
She waited, staring down at her long, pale fingers lying in her lap. There was a silence, in which she waited, as if for an axe to fall. Other people talked in the room. Chairs scraped on the floor; the door banged. The moment seemed to go on and on.
At last she heard his voice over the other voices around them.
‘Should I care?’
Daisy looked up, startled. She could see that he was shocked, moved, and his face was full of emotion.
‘What d’you mean?’ she said, confused.
‘I mean – am I supposed to condemn you? Is that it? I love you, Daisy. You’re the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met. And in fact – this might sound an awful thing to say – but you seemed almost too perfect. And here am I . . .’ He looked down at himself. ‘A wreck of a thing.’ He looked at her very seriously. ‘But I do want you to know that apart from the bit of junk inside and the legs, all else is in working order.’ His cheeks flamed as he spoke. ‘And I shall learn to walk again – I know I shan’t always be just stuck like this. I’m determined. If you were prepared to take this – all this – on, I’m yours. You’re the woman for me. I know that. If you can accept all this.’
She smiled through the tears that were already running down her cheeks.
‘Yes . . .’ She reached out a hand and Stephen grasped hold of it with such gladness, drinking in her words. ‘I am – of course I am, dear, dear Stephen! I’m so sorry, but I just couldn’t let myself talk to you. Not while Den still thought . . . But seeing you every week has been the best thing that has happened to me in . . . well, ever. I love coming here to teach the class but the best thing has been seeing you, talking to you. You just . . .’ She gave a small shrug. ‘I just love you – I can’t help it. Like no one else, ever.’
Stephen let out a laugh that was almost a shout and nearly everyone in the room looked round.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, looking round. ‘It’s just that this beautiful girl has just told me that she loves me, that’s all!’
There was laughter and a scattering of applause and Daisy, cheeks burning even more, stood up to reach over and fling her arms round his shoulders and hold him tight.
‘I don’t want to marry you until I can stand beside you – one way or another,’ Stephen told her. ‘I’m not going to the altar with my girl in this blasted chair.’
Over the following months, as they grew to know each other more, love each other more, there were so many things to think about, in terms of how they could live, how they would manage with all Stephen’s difficulties.
Daisy brought Hester to visit and the two of them, though each shy at first, finally charmed one other.
And Stephen spent months going back and forth to the Uffculme Hospital in Kings Heath, where he was fitted eventually with two prosthetic legs. The torment of soreness and struggle and frustration that this entailed for him weighed on Daisy. But Stephen was utterly determined.
On one of the last days of 1917, Daisy had received a letter. The handwriting was instantly recognizable and she felt a pulse of dread. It was Den’s. Surely he was not going to go on pursuing her? He had steam-rollered her into a promise before, but now, surely, she had made herself clear?
She read the letter, written in his usual style, in private, up in her attic bedroom.
Dear Daisy,
So there sending me back again soon as Christmas is over I’ll be on my way to France. I don’t want to leave without saying a thing or two to you. You’ve all of you your family and Mr Watts and all of them have always been decent to me and I want to keep things right. I didnt like you coming saying what you did but you was right. You and me aren’t meant to be together even though I’d like to see you I’d always like that.
Just in case like I want to tell you I got wed last week. A girl called Josie O’Toole you saw her I think. Lovely Irish wench her is and we’ll make a right Mr and Mrs together, if I’m spared and Ile bring her back to Birmingham.
Say a prayer for us Daisy and I hope well meet again later one day.
With fond wishes,
Den Poole.
1919
Fifty-Five
‘Do you realize,’ Stephen said, ‘that it’s twenty-one months and three days since you first told me that you loved me?’
He rolled over and seized Daisy by the waist, nuzzling into her back.
‘Hey – stop – you’re tickling me!’ She giggled and twisted round to look at him, his lovely face, the right face, and his curly hair dark against the pillow. ‘You’re not still counting, are you!’
Stephen picked up the end of her thick, pale plait and tickled her nose with it. ‘Oh, I am. I’ll go on counting for the rest of our lives.’
‘And driving me mad!’ she laughed.
She looked round the bare room, as yet unfamiliar and with almost nothing in it except the bed. This had been the first night in their new home, and it was in Caroline Street, only a few minutes’ walk away from Chain Street and Pa and Ma and everyone else.
Stephen pulled himself up on one elbow and looked down into her eyes, as if to say, Remember?
‘Ma said she’d come and help today,’ Daisy said. ‘Or at least keep an eye on Hessie anyway.’
‘Good of her.’ Stephen fixed his gaze on her, caressing the curved belly through her white nightdress. ‘And how is my flesh and blood getting along?’
He spoke teasingly, but not once, since they had been courting and married, had he ever shown an ounce of difficulty with having Hester in their lives. Life was life, was his view. He was lucky enough still to have that and everything added on was a bonus – including Hester, who already adored him. She loved to be close to Stephen while he was working and Stephen teased Daisy about it.
‘This one is born to work with wood. We’ll have her by my side as a cabinetmaker once she can see over the table.’
‘Oh, no – she’s going to be a silversmith!’ Daisy protested. ‘It runs in the family.’
‘Hmm. Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’ he said.
And now, miraculous as it seemed, they had their own place and were starting to get settled in.
‘So – let’s be sure about what we’re doing,’ she said as his warm hand moved over her tight flesh.
‘We’ve been over and over it.’
‘But are you sure you don’t want us to sleep downstairs? There’s room and we could . . .’
‘No. Look, I can do the stairs – and it’s only really at night I’ll need to go up. Your business upstairs, mine down. Our room upstairs, and the children – just normal. We don’t need to do anything special.’
Once they were up they looked round the house again like excited children, Hessie running through the empty rooms, excited by the clatter of her feet on the bare boards. Her hair was long and wavy down her back now.
‘So, did you like your new bedroom, Hess?’ Daisy said. The children’s room was at the back of the house. ‘Soon you can share it with the new baby.’
‘When’s it coming?’ Hessie asked impatiently. ‘It’s taking too long.’
‘Oh, soon. But it’s not taking any longer than you did!’
Her own workroom looked out over Caroline Street and Stephen’s was to be downstairs at the front – the two rooms letting in the most light. They had already had two woodworking benches carried into the room and he had brought his tools from home. Their living room and kitchen would be at the back.
Finally they went outside and stood in the street, looking up at the house, in a row of high terraces with long windows. Before ever moving in they had had two brass signs made, and fixed one above the other beside the front door:
‘Stephen Ratcliffe – Cabinetmaker and Furniture Restorer,’ read the first, and above it:
‘Daisy Tallis – Silversmith.’
�
�Looks very fine,’ a voice said behind them. Startled, Daisy turned to see her father, a portly figure now, in his big coat and hat, looking up at the premises which would be their home. He was holding something: her silver-wire tree.
‘Gran-pa!’ Hester cried, running to him.
‘Pa! What’re you doing here?’ Daisy said. ‘I thought Ma was coming?’
‘She will be a bit later,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to have a look. You’re both doing a good job. Brought you this as well.’ He handed her the tree. ‘It’s a lovely thing.’
‘Come inside,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘You can help me decide on my workshop.’
Both of them knew that she did not really need help, but it was a lovely thing, a shared thing. They stood back a respectful distance as Stephen struggled into the house with his sticks, Hester urging him from behind. Their eyes met, Daisy’s saying to Philip, I know it’s hard – and I love him for all of it, for all of his love and determination.
They went upstairs and she carried the almost finished tree and set it down on her workbench. She and her father talked benches and light and tools and then stood by the window looking out. To her surprise, her father shyly laid an arm around her shoulders.
‘I’m proud of you, young wench. And your mother would’ve been too. Proud as punch, the pair of us.’
Her tree gleamed in the light, its shape flowing this way and that, over the branches and leaves and creatures, all the birds of the air which were welcomed and settled in its branches.
And she rested her head on his shoulder, satisfied and content.
Acknowledgements
Once again my thanks to the staff of the Hockley museums, Birmingham, Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, especially Steve Whyte; to Evans Silversmiths, especially Sheila Askew; and to the volunteers at the Pen Factory.
My thanks also go to Sian Hindle at the School of Jewellery and Silversmithing in Vittoria Street for taking me on a tour and answering all sorts of questions; and to Fiona Waterhouse for her assistance at the archives at Birmingham City University. Also to Laura Cox, archivist at the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, and to the Cadbury Research Library at Birmingham University, where are housed copies of Southern Cross, the magazine of the First Southern General Hospital, which was at Birmingham University during the First World War.
A great many books were helpful, but especially: Shena Mason’s Jewellery Making in Birmingham, 1750–1995; Bernard Cuzner’s A Silversmith’s Manual; David S. Shure’s Hester Bateman, Queen of English Silversmiths; Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery’s Arthur and Georgie Gaskin; Kathleen Dayus’s The Girl from Hockley; Sian Roberts’s Birmingham, Remembering 1914–1918; Terry Carter’s Birmingham in the Great War, Mobilisation and Recruitment, The First Eighteen Months of the War.
And to Debbie Carter for all her help.
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First published 2019 by Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5098-4156-1
Copyright © Annie Murray 2019
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