Daisychain Summer

  ‘Then it’s as well that young Drew had it when he was two, or it’d be him, next,’ Tilda retorted. ‘That Tatiana’s never away from Rowangarth, these days. And that governess of hers is so hoity-toity she could take on Mrs Clementina!’

  ‘Now, Tilda. Don’t speak ill of the afflicted. Mrs Clementina hasn’t been the same since her son was taken. The poor soul needs our pity.’

  ‘It’s Mr Edward I’m sorry for,’ Mary frowned. ‘I did hear he’s just about at the end of his tether with her. Ought to have her certified, and put away!’

  ‘Now that will do! I’ll not have talk like that in my kitchen and there’s Miss Julia back from London,’ Cook pronounced as the drawing-room bell began to dance on its spring. ‘Her’ll be wanting a sup of tea so off you go, and see to it.’

  ‘Kettle’s just on the boil,’ Tilda soothed when Mary had whisked, nose in air, up the kitchen stairs. ‘I’ll mash a pot for us, an’ all. Sit you down – won’t be a minute. And there was something I was meaning to ask you, Mrs Shaw.’

  She picked up the morning paper, straightening it, folding it over, pointing to a man with a slanting fringe and a small, comic moustache, his arm extended in a wave to the camera. ‘Who’s this Herr Hitler, then?’

  ‘Let’s have a look. German, is he?’ Cook hooked on her reading glasses, then gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Funny-looking little feller. Now hurry up with that tea, Tilda. I’m fair parched …’

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘Mm?’ Alice piped the final pink sugar daisy onto the centre of the cake, then stood back to admire her work. ‘Now doesn’t that look grand? Yours and mine to share. What was it you were saying?’

  ‘I was trying to ask you – well, about the Grammar School. Isn’t it going to cost you and Dada too much, if I don’t pass my scholarship?’

  ‘No, love. We’ll manage.’ Of course they could, though the lass wasn’t to know it. The trustees who looked after her money could advance most things they asked for, provided they made sense, like money for education or to meet doctors’ bills. All they had to do was ask, until Daisy came of age.

  ‘But I know how much it costs, Mam. Twenty guineas a year and my bus fares, too. And the uniform is expensive – I’d need so many things. It’s going to cost more than fifty pounds, Keth said.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake stop your nattering on, our Daisy. Had you forgotten about that hundred pounds Mr Hillier left you? And there’s the money Sir Giles gave me and I put in the bank for you, when you were born – had you forgotten about that?’

  ‘No, Mam. But is it going to keep me in Grammar School for five years?’

  ‘It most certainly is. Me and Dada want you to get a bit of education and, scholarship or not, that’s what you’ll have. We can manage, so let’s hear no more about it. And if you want to do something useful, get yourself upstairs with the mop! I saw dust under your bed, this morning!’

  ‘The child will have to be told,’ Alice said before Tom hardly had time to hang up his cap. ‘She’s going on about the money for Creesby Grammar and worrying about how we’re going to get it.

  ‘She’s eleven tomorrow, Tom. Surely she’s old enough to know about Mr Hillier’s money? It bothers me, having to watch my tongue all the time. Can’t we tell her? Tomorrow might be a good time. That ten thousand pounds is a weight on my conscience, though heaven knows I’m grateful she’ll never want for anything.’

  ‘It’ll be nearer eleven thousand, now, with the interest it’ll have earned,’ Tom said, matter-of-factly. ‘Nigh on two hundred a year she’ll have been getting on that money, and it’s five years come November, since Dickon and Mr Hillier were taken.’

  ‘I know. I don’t forget.’ It still made Alice want to close her eyes, just to think of the awful way by which the money had come to Daisy. ‘And there’s something else, Tom. When we told Drew that I was his real mother, remember how Daisy took on about it? It wasn’t only me being married to Giles – it was the deceit of it, too. Us not telling her – that’s what got her most upset. And if we keep the money from her for very much longer, she’ll get so she never trusts us again!’

  ‘You’re right. You usually are, love, though how the lass is going to cope with such a shock is beyond me. And she’ll have to be warned not to go showing off about it.’

  ‘She won’t do that, Tom. She’ll happen be nervous about it as I was – still am. There’s a lot of sense in that young head.’

  ‘Then we’ll tell her tomorrow. There’ll be Julia and Drew and Keth coming to tea – what if we tell her after they’ve gone home – give her time to sleep on it, sort of?’

  ‘Sleep?’ Alice clucked. ‘I didn’t sleep for a week when you told me about it! And there’s something else to think on about. When the word gets round – and one day it will – that Daisy Dwerryhouse is an heiress, there could be all sorts of scroungers after her, courting her for her money. How long is it going to be before she starts wondering if young men like her for what she is or for what she’s got coming to her?’

  ‘Oh, Alice Dwerryhouse!’ Tom gave a great shout of laughter. ‘Our Daisy is only just eleven. There’ll be no getting wed till she’s of age. She’ll have ten years to get used to it; learn to sort the wheat from the chaff. And fortune hunters will have me to contend with.’

  ‘Aye. That’s what worries me.’ Visions of Tom with a shotgun ran through Alice’s mind. ‘But at least we’re agreed. We tell her tomorrow night?’

  ‘We’ll tell her, you and me both. We’ll manage, somehow.’

  It occurred to him as he reached for his tobacco jar that they usually had – between them.

  Keth pushed the Evening Press through Keeper’s Cottage letterbox, then sighed relief that his paper round was finished until tomorrow. Not that it could be called a round; just the delivery of newspapers to Rowangarth and the cottages and houses dotted about the estate; papers left obligingly at the gate-lodge mornings, evenings and Sundays by the newsagent from Holdenby. And on Sunday mornings a florin lay on top of the neatly-bundled pile which, when added to the sixpenny-piece pocket money earned for carrying coal buckets at the bothy, gave Keth a feeling of great financial security. Two and sixpence; half a crown – thirty pennies.

  His father, he often thought, had only earned ten shillings a week on account of his lameness, and it didn’t seem right, when he thought about it. But Keth Purvis would earn much, much more. A place at University was his distant, golden dream. He and Mum wouldn’t be poor when he was a man of means and letters.

  He found Daisy sitting beneath the elms at the far end of Brattocks Wood, arms folded round her knees, so still she could have been one of the statues in the linden walk at Drew’s house.

  He loved Daisy very much, almost as much as he loved Mum; loved her when she giggled – even when she threw a tantrum. But most of all he loved the way she looked. She was the only girl he knew with such blue eyes and hair that shone on Sunday in church because she always had it washed Saturday nights, and rinsed in camomile, she said.

  He ached, sometimes, to touch her; feel the softness and prettiness of her, stroke the pale gold hair. But Mam said you didn’t touch girls – not even your own sister, if you had one – when they started to grow up because people might think the wrong things.

  He didn’t know what wrong things they could think, but Daisy was growing up, he supposed. This very minute, all faraway-looking, she seemed to be growing up quickly.

  He wondered if she loved him as much as he loved her. She was always kind to him, except when she threw a tantrum, and she didn’t snigger, all silly, when his voice went croaky – which it did a lot, these days. Sometimes it was like the voice he’d always had, but sometimes it went all low and wobbly and it was because he, too, was growing up, Mam said, and to think nothing of it at all, because big lads had to have big voices.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, because he always knew to be careful when her mouth was set all obstinate. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Thinking. And I�
�ve been making a daisychain and don’t dare say that only kids make daisychains!’

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’ He wondered if she was poorly. They had eaten a lot, yesterday, at her birthday party; trifle, cherry buns and birthday cake decorated with pink daisies.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He picked up the daisychain she had made and put it on her head, like a little coronet. He did it to cheer her up, but she shook her head so angrily that it flew off and lay on the grass at her side, all sad-looking. ‘I mean – well, you look serious.’

  ‘That’s because I was thinking, ’til you came. About my hair. Mam says now I’m eleven I can grow my fringe out.’

  ‘Why?’ He sat down beside her – not too near, because you could never be quite sure, with Daisy. ‘I like your fringe.’

  ‘Well I don’t! It’s my hair and I’ll do what I want with it!’

  He took a deep breath, staring at the little bruised flowers. Then he said, ‘I think you’d better tell me – if it isn’t a stomach ache, that is …’

  ‘N-no.’ For the first time she lifted her head. ‘It’s worse – and better – than a stomach ache, though last night, when they told me, I felt funny – like when you’re going to be sick and trying not to.’

  ‘Yes.’ He knew the feeling. ‘But what did they say to you, last night?’

  ‘You won’t tell? Promise you won’t? It’s so serious that I’m not even telling the Clan; only Drew.’

  ‘Then hadn’t it better wait till we get to Rowangarth? We said we’d go, this morning, to help clean out his rabbits. You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t, but I don’t feel like rabbits, today.’ To a gamekeeper’s daughter, rabbits were very ordinary. She would rather have Dada’s ferrets, any day. ‘And I want to tell you, before I tell Drew.’

  ‘All right, then.’ He was glad she wanted to tell him first. It made his cheeks feel warm. ‘I promise I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘And when you know, you won’t be cross with me, no matter how awful you think it is?’

  ‘No. Not with you, Daisy.’

  ‘We-e-ll.’ She took a deep breath, then the words tumbled out. ‘I’ve got money. Mr Hillier left it to me.’

  ‘I know. A hundred pounds.’

  ‘No, Keth. More. A terrible lot more.’

  ‘Two hundred? Five hundred?’

  ‘No. It was like that when they told me last night. Quite a lot of money, they said. I think they were trying to break it to me gently. “What would you say,” Dada said, “if it was a thousand pounds?” A thousand pounds!’

  ‘That’s a Rolls-Royce, Daisy.’ His mouth had gone very dry.

  ‘Yes. But when they told me – really told me – well, I know Mr Hillier was fond of me and I liked him, too. Mr Hillier was my grandpa, I suppose, next to Uncle Reuben …’

  ‘And? How much, really, did he leave you?’

  ‘Ten thousand pounds.’ She took a deep breath, then let it go in little huffs. ‘And if you’re feeling funny about it, just think how I felt. I couldn’t imagine ten thousand. I wrote ten down, then I put a comma and wrote three nothings after it. But I still couldn’t imagine what ten thousand was.

  ‘So Dada said I was to think of it in houses. D’you know, Keth, it would buy twenty little new houses. And worse than that, Mam said it would buy Rowangarth – or the best part of it.’

  ‘It is serious, Daisy.’ He looked at her, his eyes darker than ever. They’d been dark like that, she remembered, the day at West Welby churchyard at his Dada’s funeral.

  ‘Yes. But perhaps you’ll be more used to it, by tomorrow. I felt ever so wobbly. Mam gave me something to help me drop off last night, but it didn’t do any good. She came in to look at me and I pretended I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I just lay there, thinking about it, and this morning it didn’t seem quite such a shock.’ She looked at him, wanting him to speak, but he did not.

  ‘I can’t have it till I’m ever so old, Keth – that’s one good thing about it, but I can have some of it for important things. Someone called Sir Maxwell Briggs and the man who was Mr Hillier’s solicitor and Dada are what they call my trustees. They are looking after the money ’til I’m old enough to have it all to myself. But they can let me have money for the Grammar School and for uniform and school books – for sensible things.’

  She paused, searching with her eyes for his, but he was looking at the grass so there was no way of knowing if he was as shocked as she had been.

  ‘You won’t tell, Keth? I’d hate it if people knew about it – people who are poor wouldn’t think it was fair.’

  ‘People like me and Mum, you mean? Oh, it isn’t fair but I’m not jealous and I’m sure Mum won’t be.’

  ‘But she mustn’t know, Keth! No one must!’

  ‘Sorry. I won’t tell her, then.’

  ‘No. Please don’t? And I’m glad you aren’t jealous.’

  ‘Course not, Daisy. When I get used to it, I’ll be ever so glad for you.’

  But he wouldn’t be glad. Not ever. He had thought, one day when he’d been to University and got a good job – a good position – that he would ask Daisy to marry him. Dad once said that a good wife was worth her weight in rubies and that no man got anywhere without a good woman behind him. That was when he’d thought it would be nice for Daisy to be his wife – one day, of course.

  But now things were different. One day, Daisy would be rich and she would marry a rich man; not the son of someone who’d been a dog boy and walked lame and tipped his cap to his betters out of gratitude.

  ‘What’s the matter, Keth? You are cross about it, and I wish I hadn’t told you. I wish they had never told me!’

  ‘I’m not mad – honest. But I’m sad, Daisy. I’d thought that one day – when I got rich – you and me would be married. I wanted to buy you things, but now you’ll always be richer than me and –’

  ‘But that wouldn’t matter, Keth – if I said I’d marry you, that is …’

  ‘Well, I haven’t asked you, so it really doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes filled with tears. They spilled down her cheeks and she sniffed very loudly, but he still wouldn’t look at her.

  Daisy was crying. He didn’t like it when she cried. It made him feel panicky inside but there wasn’t anything he could do about it – not even lend her his handkerchief – because he felt like crying, too. He felt like – like the daisychain in the grass, all limp and thrown away, so he said instead. ‘If we don’t go and help Drew see to his rabbits his mother won’t let him go to the matinee this afternoon, and it’s cartoons and cowboys …’

  ‘Ooooh!’ Daisy pulled her sleeve across her eyes, all at once angry. ‘You care more about Popeye than you do about me! Well, you can marry Maisie Smith when you get rich!’ Maisie Smith had a snotty nose and bit her nails. ‘And see if I care, Keth Purvis!’ She stumbled to her feet, then ran, sobbing, to the shed in which she knew she would find her father. ‘Dada!’ she choked, flinging herself into his arms.

  ‘Now whatever is the trouble, little lass?’ He sat down on an upturned box, lifting her onto his knee, mopping her eyes with a large, red-spotted handkerchief.

  ‘Nothing’s the trouble,’ she choked, gasping for breath between sobs that were really hurting inside her. ‘But I hate grown-ups and I hate Mr Hillier and –

  ‘Now, now, now! Hate is a bitter-strong word for a little lass to use and you don’t hate anybody, Daisy Dwerryhouse, is that clear?’

  ‘All right. I don’t hate Mr Hillier, but I don’t like Keth Purvis and I never want to talk to him again!’

  ‘So you won’t want your pocket money for the pictures this afternoon, then?’

  ‘No! Oh yes, I suppose so but oh, Dada, isn’t ten thousand pounds a lot of money?’

  ‘It is, Daisy. Just to think of it gives your Mam the shivers even yet – and she’s known about it for nigh on five years. But we reckoned you were old enough to be sensible about it – and let’s face it, you can
’t have it for ten more years, and in ten years’ time I reckon you’ll be able to cope with being a rich young lady. Now tell me – did you and Keth have words about it?’

  ‘Yes, and now Keth says he won’t be able to marry me because I’ll be too rich. So I told him to marry Maisie Smith and I ran away. He’ll have gone to Rowangarth. We said we’d help Drew clean out his rabbits …’

  ‘Then I think you should go after him and tell him you’re sorry if you upset him. I know that temper of yours, our lass.’

  ‘But he upset me too, Dada!’

  ‘Then you’ve both got some apologizing to do, I reckon. And lass – about marrying Keth or anybody else for that matter – that’s something else you’ve got ten years in front of you to consider, don’t forget. So off you go and give a hand with those rabbits like you promised. And be back home sharp for your dinner or you’ll miss the bus into Creesby.’

  ‘And what was all that about?’ asked Alice from the back door.

  ‘Nothing, love. Just Daisy being – well – being Daisy. She’s off to Rowangarth. She’ll be as right as rain afore you can say Jack Robinson.’

  She wouldn’t, of course. What they had told her last night would take a bit of digesting. But in ten more years she just might have got the hang of it and learned to live with. it. He hoped so, because if she didn’t there’d be nothing but trouble ahead. Nothing was more certain.

  Daisy caught up with Keth as he was crossing the wild garden and she called, ‘Keth! Wait?’

  So he turned and stood there, because he’d wanted her to come so he could tell her that Maisie Smith wouldn’t do.

  She stood, breathing deeply because she had run very quickly. And when she lifted her eyes to his he was smiling and it gave her the courage to say. ‘I’m sorry, Keth. I don’t want us to fall out over that money. And I don’t want you to give me things, anyway – not things you buy with money.’

  ‘Then what kind of things?’

  ‘O-oh, things like taking me to school when I was little and being with me when Morgan died. And do you remember the butterfly, Keth?’