Daisychain Summer

  ‘I still think it’s very sad.’ Keth pulled on his jacket. ‘You should feel sorry for people like her, even if she is a bit of a martinet.’ Martinet was the word his mother had used. ‘And you aren’t telling us anything new, Kitty. All Holdenby is talking about Mrs Sutton – and half the tradesmen in Creesby, too.

  ‘And I’m not staying here to listen to you doing your party piece, Kitty. I’ve got papers to deliver and homework to do!’

  ‘I’ll come with you, then,’ Bas said. ‘You coming too, Drew?’

  ‘Well!’ said Kitty when she and Tatiana and Daisy had been deserted for a paper round. ‘It serves them right, ’cos they’ve missed the best bit – though I couldn’t have told – not when Drew was there. It’s Uncle Nathan, you see. Mom said he’s in love with Aunt Julia!’

  ‘Oooh! I wish she was in love with him, but Mam says there’ll never be another Andrew. Mam was there the night Aunt Julia and the doctor met,’ Daisy hastened, determined that Kitty should not have all the limelight, in those days, young ladies like Aunt Julia couldn’t go anywhere alone – not even to the shops – and Mam went to London with her as a chaperon. Mam did the sewing at Rowangarth, then; before she married Sir Giles, that was.’

  She could talk, now, about Mam being married before, because she’d had time to get used to it. And she mentioned it because Tatty and Kitty ought to be reminded from time to time that Mam had once been Lady Sutton and that she, Daisy, had every right to be one of the Clan.

  ‘Don’t you mind about it?’ Tatiana asked, wide-eyed. ‘Your mother, I mean …’

  ‘Not really.’ Now that she was fourteen and understood that Mam and Dada still loved each other and had secret little kisses when they thought she wasn’t looking, it didn’t hurt any more. It just made her sad about Sir Giles who had been dreadfully injured crawling into No Man’s Land, Mam said, trying to bring back wounded soldiers. ‘Mam looked after Sir Giles, you know. They had to special-nurse him. He was so ill they sent for the priest – an army padre. It was your Uncle Nathan, you know, and it was him married Mam and Sir Giles in France.’

  ‘Aah.’ Tatiana’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘It’s as sad as the Bolsheviks killing Grandfather Petrovsky and Uncle Basil. I hate wars and I hate Lenin!’

  The words came, bitter and voluble, then, in keeping with her suddenly red cheeks; strange words, foreign words.

  ‘Well, heck – what was all that about?’ Kitty demanded.

  ‘I was swearing and cursing, in mother’s language. I always do it when I’m angry or upset. That way, not many people know what I’m saying.’

  ‘Your mother taught you Russian swear words?’ Daisy gasped.

  ‘Of course not! Karl taught me – you know – Karl the Cossack. He’s mother’s major-domo, sort of. Karl teaches me swear words and I teach Karl English. He speaks it quite well, now. Only he says it’s best only between me and him so people don’t know that he understands quite a bit of what they are saying. That way he gets to hear a lot more.’

  ‘That’s sneaky!’ Kitty exploded.

  ‘Like hiding behind sofas, listening,’ said Tatiana.

  ‘Guess you’re right.’ Kitty was always gracious in defeat. ‘You couldn’t teach me a few so I can swear at Bas?’ Tatty was coming on apace, she was forced to admit; a whole lot better than the spoiled brat who couldn’t go anywhere without her nanny. Maybe it was because of Mam’selle.

  ‘All right – but just a few of the not so bad ones, to start off with. The bad ones – the really wicked ones – I might teach you later.’

  ‘Gee, thanks, Tatty. And isn’t it nearly teatime? Let’s not wait for those guys?’

  ‘We could go to Keeper’s, if you like,’ Daisy offered. ‘Mam is baking, today. There’ll be bread and honey – linden blossom honey – and cut-and-come-again cake.’

  ‘Let’s!’ said Tatiana, who loved bread and honey.

  So they linked arms and made off, completely contented. There were times, Daisy thought, that life was very nice. Times like today; sunny, and the air buzzy with bees and the far meadow shimmering with buttercups. And almost like in the poem – honey still for tea; sort of contented, and safe.

  Now she was fourteen and she and Mam had had a woman-to-woman talk about her periods and about her blushing a lot when Keth smiled at her, she felt a dizzy happiness she couldn’t explain but which was warm and lovely and precious.

  She loved Keth very much; knew she would always love him and that when he went away to University he would ask her to be his serious girl.

  ‘I think,’ she said gravely, breaking the easy silence, ‘that when I’m ever so old – older than twenty-one, I mean – I shall always remember this summer.’

  The summer of ’thirty-four. Even in spite of Mrs Clementina’s brandy, she would remember it.

  ‘Do I have to, Mam?’ Piano practice took up far too much time and what good did it do? ‘I said I’d go to Drew’s. He’ll be wondering where I am.’ Daisy gazed at the sheet of music before her. Piano practice was a nuisance and it was only because Mam thought it tasteful to have a piano in the front parlour.

  ‘Why on earth do you want a piano?’ Dada had asked, and Mam said, ‘So Daisy can learn, of course.’

  Daisy didn’t mind one bit her Mam going up in the world, but she resented five-finger exercises and all that went with them; resented the daily half-hour her piano teacher in Creesby insisted upon.

  ‘Fifteen minutes more, if you please, and Drew isn’t waiting on you. Drew is with your Dada, walking the covers.’

  Drew was learning to handle a shotgun. His tuition under Tom began with an air rifle, shooting at tin cans, and now he had progressed to a single-barrelled gun which he handled with skill; as Dada had known he would, of course.

  Dada had been strict, mind, allowing no backsliding, insisting on all the rules of safety; never to point a gun – even unloaded – at anyone nor climb a fence or a gate, whilst holding one. And Drew knew by now the importance of pulling the barrel through; of keeping it clean and shining and that any carelessness or sloppiness would be frowned upon, maybe even reported to her ladyship.

  Drew admired Tom. Not only had he known him all his life, but Tom was kind like Uncle Nathan, though of course he and Uncle Nathan were very different. His uncle knew about books and verbs and paintings and about the Bible. Uncle Nathan even made the Bible interesting.

  Daisy’s father knew about the weather and the tracks of birds and animals, and there wasn’t a bird’s egg he couldn’t instantly put a name to nor birdsong he didn’t recognize at once.

  Tom could walk without making a sound; never snapped a twig underfoot and could steal up on a creature without its knowing. And Tom was Daisy’s Dada, which meant, in a roundabout way, that he could share him with Daisy, just as he and Daisy snared Lady. In the summer of ’thirty-four, Drew Sutton was a contented young man, and almost six feet tall.

  ‘I’m bored.’ Daisy ignored the Strauss waltz and began, impudently, to play a few bars of ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. She liked the popular tunes – those Henry Hall played on the wireless; was in a state of bliss when they took a day trip to Scarborough. Not for Daisy Dwerryhouse the sea and the sand, but the music shops along the sea front, where she could listen to the pianists who played the song of the day, then sold sheets of music for sixpence.

  She wished Mam would let her have dancing lessons. Now she was fourteen she was allowed to go to the parties at school and it was awful that she couldn’t dance at all when there were girls in her class who could do the Tango!

  ‘Then bored you must be, Miss, ’til Tatiana and Bas and Kitty get back from London. But if you’re so fed up, then take a mop and duster up to your room and give it a good clean – and a tidy out, too!’

  Daisy returned to the Blue Danube waltz with renewed concentration. You couldn’t win, with Mam. She wouldn’t mind betting that Mam had been the terror of the wards when she was nursing.

  Daisy sighed, and surrendered. And anywa
y, soon now she would hear the snap of the letterbox as Keth pushed the evening paper through it. That would be her cue to run after him, calling for him to wait, and she would walk the remainder of the round with him, content just to be at his side.

  She really did love Keth, but Keth had to study hard so he could sit the County Major examination that would give him not just a place at University but would pay, too, for his residence and books, he said.

  Keth had to pass because jobs were even worse to get, now, with those who had one living in fear of losing it. It had been so awful, Daisy brooded, that there had been a hunger march from the north, all the way down to London.

  ‘Poor souls,’ Mam had said. ‘I don’t blame them one bit, taking a petition to Parliament.’ Someone had to do it, she said, to let those in the south know how desperate for work the north of England was.

  Daisy had wept when those men got to Hyde Park. It seemed so wrong they should be charged by the police and the march broken up. Their long, weary walk had come to nothing and the million signatures they collected along the way never reached Downing Street. She wept because Dada might have been one of those men and because the guilty feeling about her money was never far from her mind.

  And then Mam had gone all faraway looking and told her about a Hyde Park of long ago when she and Aunt Julia had gone to a Suffragette meeting and been charged themselves by policemen waving truncheons, led by a sergeant on horseback. And Aunt Julia pulled her skirt above her knees, which was a most unladylike thing to do in those days, and kicked out like a hoyden.

  ‘Oh, Mam,’ Daisy breathed. ‘What did you do, then?’

  ‘Do? I joined in, an’ all! Couldn’t have your Aunt Julia taking all the bother, now could I? Besides, I was supposed to be looking after her …’

  She had felt quite peculiar, Daisy remembered, and found it hard to believe that Mam, let alone Aunt Julia, could have brawled with the London police and had resolved to remember it next time Mam gave her a ticking-off for being pert. Answering back wasn’t anywhere near so bad as fighting in Hyde Park.

  Mam had smiled softly, then, and said, ‘That was when Julia met the young doctor – and fell in love …’

  Grown-ups could be very inconsistent, Daisy frowned.

  Keth laid down his pen, closed his book and sighed relief. Physics, mathematics and general science he was confident he had conquered, yet now there was aerodynamics, a subject that had only excited his attention when the faceless men from the Air Ministry came to offer a great deal of money to farmers willing to give up their acres.

  Mr Edward and her ladyship had been quite worried, Keth remembered, until they learned that the new aerodrome was to be built three miles on the other side of Holdenby, nearer, really, to Creesby.

  Then Lady Helen began to worry again. Why, she wanted to know, did the government need to build aerodromes if it wasn’t for bombing planes to take off from and who did we want to bomb, anyway? And when no one came up with an answer, Daisy had told him, Lady Helen presumed it was because Herr Hider had decided that Germany needed an air force, and now that he was Chancellor and almost as important as General Hindenburg and was seen on the newsreels at the picture houses, ranting about the Jews who had burned down the Reichstag, people were listening to him in Germany and saying yes, of course they needed an air force – a Luftwaffe – and an army and a navy, too. Germany defeated, humiliated and never again to be allowed to transgress, was rising defiantly.

  Not that they would fight, everyone said. How could they when they had lost just as many of their young men as the British and French?

  But for all that, aeroplanes and all things concerned in lifting them off the ground became Keth’s new interest, or would be, when the aerodrome was finally finished. Its construction had been delayed because some farmers had refused to give up their fields and farmhouses in the hope, some said, of getting more compensation than was offered. But now that all were satisfied and the building of an aerodrome more fact than fantasy, it might be interesting, Keth considered, to have bombers – or would it be fighter planes – flying overhead.

  But first must come the exams. They were always there at the back of his mind, sometimes a worry, sometimes a challenge. But soon they would be behind him and waiting would take over from worry; waiting for the letter that would tell him he had been given a place at Manchester, perhaps, or Leeds. He had never aspired to Oxford or Cambridge. His feet were firmly planted on red bricks, and besides, Leeds and Manchester were nearer to home and to his mother about whom he constantly worried.

  It was neither right nor decent at seventeen, when most boys had been working for three years, that he should still be at school and kept there by his mother. Sometimes he felt like a pansy, living off her, though one day it would all be worth it; it would.

  But in the summer of ’thirty-four, Keth’s dreams held substance and were mostly golden. That summer he could look forward with the confidence of the young to the day when the waiting was over and the business of getting on in the world could begin. He stuffed his books into his satchel, then called, ‘Won’t be long, Mum. Just going to see to the papers!’

  ‘Well, now!’ Amelia stirred her coffee, then settled herself comfortably for a chat. It had been announced on the early news bulletin on the wireless, read with pleased surprise in the morning papers and was now being talked about by delighted women throughout the entire country. ‘A royal wedding! That’ll be the second of your princes down the aisle.’

  Prince George to the Princess Marina of Greece. Such a beautiful bride she would be, women sighed, gazing at her picture.

  ‘Everyone here is very pleased,’ Helen smiled. ‘Women do so like a wedding.’

  ‘Pity about the date, though.’ Amelia preferred June weddings. ‘November seems a bit drear. Ah, well. Guess I’ll have to ring round and book a London hotel before we go back – just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Amelia Sutton! You really do take the plate of biscuits!’ Helen laughed. ‘Coming over for the wedding? I thought you didn’t hold with royalty.’

  ‘No more do I, but I do like a good show, a parade with horses, and I’m not going to miss this one. The papers say it’s going to be quite something.’

  ‘Will you all be coming?’

  ‘No. Bertie said not on your life – twice a year is more’n enough for him. And the kids can’t miss school, so I’ve almost decided to fly over alone, then sail back. That way I’ll only be gone about twelve days. And I could pick up some Christmas goodies in London, whilst I’m over.’

  ‘You’re very brave, Amelia – flying, I mean. I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘But there’s nothing to it, Helen – or so my friends who have flown the Atlantic tell me. It’s all the rage, now. They say its quite luxurious, especially by flying boat, and so quick. I’ve almost made up my mind to try it – one way, that is.’

  ‘Then if there’ll only be yourself, I’m sure Julia would want you to stay at Montpelier Mews. There’s only one guest bedroom, but it’s very comfortable and quaint and you should feel quite at home there, Amelia. The house was once a stable!’

  ‘Then I just might take you up on your offer – but won’t you be going down to watch the wedding?’

  ‘Myself – no. Quiet honestly, to see so lavish a wedding might make me feel a little guilty when there is such poverty about. I’ll make do with the newsreels …’

  ‘Ha! Now who’s criticizing the royals! But there’s poverty in America, too.’ The Wall Street crash had seen to that. Amelia had good reason to be grateful she had suffered little, so carefully was her fortune invested. Land and livestock – and gold, of course. ‘But I won’t miss that wedding procession. Those horses and postilions and marching bands will surely be something to see. We don’t have anything like it, back home.’

  ‘You’ll want to see the bride?’ Helen teased.

  ‘I will, too. And a celebration will do good – cheer people up. Everybody loves a wedding and they’ll surely broa
dcast it on the wireless. It might even provide a few jobs.

  ‘I shall not apologize for my enthusiasm, Helen – especially when a big wedding is justified, once in a while – though what your heir to the throne is doing is not! Not justified, I mean!’

  ‘But what, exactly, is the Prince of Wales doing that he shouldn’t be?’ Helen frowned.

  ‘Surely you know? Those two often get themselves in the American gossip columns. And your prince shouldn’t be going to the Welsh valleys giving sympathy to out-of-work miners, then presenting his Bessie Wallis with jewels; fifty thousand pounds-worth at a time, so the newspapers have it! Sympathy comes cheap, to my mind!’

  ‘Amelia! It can’t be true. We’d know about it here, if it were. I’ll admit that on occasion a Mr and Mrs Simpson are in the Court Circulars, but only as dinner guests. And always together. Are you sure about all this?’

  Helen was worried. Of course princes had affairs; lots of young men did, then settled down into marriage, wild oats sown. But no scandal concerning the heir to the throne had appeared in British newspapers and surely if there were any truth in it …?

  ‘I only know what I’ve read. Pity I didn’t remember to bring the cuttings over with me. Guess all I can say is that the English Press is far more discreet than ours. Perhaps out of respect for your king and queen they are being – well – diplomatic in the hope it’ll blow over.

  ‘But talk has it back home that he’s real smitten, though how your church will countenance him marrying a divorcee I don’t know – especially as she’s still hitched to the second husband. Still, I’ll be over for the big parade. Hope the weather holds good. You can’t trust it, in November.’

  ‘We’ll keep our fingers crossed.’ Helen was relieved to talk about the weather. ‘The November fogs in London are simply terrible. Pea-soupers, we call them. A mixing of damp and fog and chimney smoke. It’s one of the things I like least about London. Let’s hope the sun shines on the bride.’

  Julia and Andrew had been married in November on a cold, crisp day. A wartime wedding. Julia in blue, carrying John’s orchids and, as they left the church, the sun shining briefly through the cloud. A good omen, she had thought.