Daisychain Summer

  ‘Dearest – please? You don’t look your age – not by ten years – and you are active and disgracefully healthy. Let’s not think about you getting old? Sixty-six is no age at all!’

  ‘Flatterer! But we will have a good party. We’ll forget about all the things the warmongers are saying and we’ll make sure no one in Holdenby goes hungry, nor is alone.’

  ‘But we always have done …’ Besides, there weren’t so many hungry, now; not so many men out of work because suddenly coal was needed for factories, factories which, though people tried not to think about it, were all at once turning out trucks and lorries and guns for the Army and bombers for the Air Force. And wasn’t the new aerodrome near York giving jobs to building workers who had been years on the poverty line? The shipyards, too; busy again with orders from the Admiralty though Julia insisted it was only to let Hitler know he’d better not get ideas about starting another war. That, really, was all it amounted to – wasn’t it …?

  ‘Mam – can I ask you something?’ Daisy said softly, hesitantly. ‘Before Dada gets back?’

  ‘Women’s talk, is it?’ Alice dampened a tea towel and draped it over the bowl of royal icing. ‘Won’t have to be long about it, love, or that icing’ll go stiff.’

  ‘I won’t be. In fact, you might not like what I’m going to say …’

  ‘Oh?’ Serious, was it then? ‘Try me, and see.’

  ‘It’s just that – well, did you? You and Dada, I mean?’

  ‘Did we what?’ Alice drew sharply on her breath because she knew what was to come.

  ‘Did you – before you were married – ever …’

  Her voice trailed out and she turned her back to fidget with an ornament on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Were we ever lovers, are you trying to say? And Daisy – look at me, love?’

  Reluctantly she turned, biting nervously on her lip, eyes bluer and wider than ever.

  ‘Is that what you’re asking, lass?’

  ‘Yes, Mam.’

  ‘Why? Have you and Keth –?’ Alice’s insides began to churn though why, she didn’t know. She had known this moment would come, sooner or later.

  ‘No. Honestly we haven’t. But it would be easy to, especially now that Keth is going to America.’

  ‘Not yet he isn’t going. Not ’til next summer.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ll be a long time apart and there have been times when Keth has wanted to or I’ve wanted to …’

  ‘Then thank the good Lord neither of you has wanted to both at the same time!’ Alice breathed.

  ‘I suppose you could say that. But did you ever – you and Dada?’

  ‘While we were courting?’

  Daisy nodded, eyes on hands.

  ‘Well, if you want the truth, we did. And fools we were, though I can’t rightly blame your Dada. It was me that wanted to, more’n him. It was only the once and Tom said we must never risk it again. And he was right, Daisy. He was going to war, you see, and I was too young to get wed. Your Uncle Reuben was my nearest of kin and he wouldn’t give him permission.

  ‘So it happened, and a right old pickle I’d have been in if I’d fallen for a bairn. A shotgun wedding, happen, and all Holdenby knowing we’d had to get married. That isn’t the way it should be, and you know it, or we wouldn’t be talking like this, now would we?’

  ‘But there are ways and means, aren’t there – of not having babies, I mean.’

  ‘There are, but I wouldn’t know about such things. Me and your Dada always hoped for two or three little ones, though they weren’t granted to us. But those ways and means, as you call them, aren’t always to hand when things happen, so think on.

  ‘But thank you for telling me. I hope you and me will always be able to talk things over. I’m not condemning you, either, for feeling the way you do. It happens to us all, truth known. Only safe way is to wait ’til you’re wed, as far as I know.

  ‘Y’see it’s wrong, so folks say, to do things like that out of wedlock, but once the Church gives its blessing, then all of a sudden it’s not only right, but it’s expected! It’s a funny old world, you know – but meantime, try counting to ten? And if that doesn’t work, count to ten again and think of me and your Dada and of Polly, eh? And think on that we’d all of us be more hurt than angry at the shame of a hasty wedding because folk can count, you know.’

  ‘I’ll think on, Mam. We both will.’ On an impulse, she flung her arms around Alice and hugged her tightly. ‘And thanks for listening and for not being shocked.’

  ‘Shocked? How could I be? ’Twould be the kettle calling the pot black, wouldn’t it? But it isn’t worth the risk, Daisy. Far better you wait ’til you’ve got a wedding ring on your finger for there’s no joy in fumbling in dark corners. When you’re wed it’s – it’s …’

  ‘It’s what, Mam?’ Impishly, Daisy challenged her mother.

  ‘It – it’s – well, to put it in a nutshell, it’s lovely! So now, if you’ve nothing better to do than get in my way when I’m up to my eyes icing Drew’s cake, you’d do better to take that loaf of bread to your Uncle Reuben. And stay a while – have a chat with him and don’t forget to remind him he’ll be having new year at Keeper’s and stopping the night with us, an’ all.’

  When her daughter had gone, Alice took up the bowl and began to beat the icing, but such a task was near useless, when her hands shook so.

  Daisy – that bonny little bairn who not so long ago had sat in her pram at Windrush and gurgled and flirted with Mr Hillier.

  Daisy – going to school, her hand in Keth’s; Keth always there to look after her. Like a big brother, he’d been, but not any longer. Now they were in love and there was no use tut-tutting about it because it was the way of things and had happened to her and Tom. Falling in love began at the beginning of time and would last until Judgement Day.

  And could you blame the child, Alice brooded, so like she had been at that age. And could you blame Keth who had always loved her, it seemed; could you blame him when Daisy was so beautiful, so fair and slim and tall? Daisy Dwerryhouse could turn the head of any young man she met, yet she wanted only Keth.

  But it was a dear, funny old world and her own world was good because Tom had been given back to her and they’d had Daisy and were as happy, now, as the day they were wed, nearly eighteen years ago.

  So did it matter that in three days, another year would be upon them, and the icing would hardly be set on the cake when the time came to cut it if she didn’t get a move on. Yet she paused to smile, to count her blessings.

  Tom and Daisy and Reuben, her wonderful family. And mother-in-law and Julia – and Drew, half hers; Drew who was growing up so like Giles.

  ‘Lord.’ She closed her eyes tightly. ‘Let the warmongers be wrong. Don’t let Keth and Drew have to go to war, and maybe Bas. And may Daisy and Tatiana and Kitty never know the heartache of parting from their sweethearts.’ Because it was warmongering and scaremongering to think that Hider could be so stupid as to start another war when people had hardly got over the last one.

  She picked up the bowl again, beating furiously as the dogs outside began to bark. Tom was back from his rounds of the game covers and Brattocks Wood.

  Tom. As long as she had Tom, nothing could harm her. And she would stop her fretting about Daisy and they would have the best new year’s eve ever.

  ‘In here, love,’ she called, all at once needing to feel his lips, cold from the December night, on hers. ‘Kettle’s on,’ she said softly as he came in from the cold, rubbing his hands, holding them to the fire. ‘And love – kiss me, please?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ he smiled, laying his mouth on hers.

  His lips were cold as she knew they would be and they told her, silently, what she needed to know. Tom loved her, still, and all else was of little consequence.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘What for, lass?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular – and everything,’ she smiled. ‘Now ma
sh us both a sup of tea whilst I get this icing on the cake.’

  Then she offered her mouth to be kissed again.

  Julia was close to tears by the time Nathan arrived. The party was over and Rowangarth strangely silent; everyone save herself in bed, or gone home. But for the fact that Nathan had promised to come immediately the church service was over, she too would be in bed and weeping into her pillow, she shouldn’t wonder.

  She should not be feeling like this. Everything had gone so well – Drew’s birthday party and the Clan together again and having a wonderful time. Then later, the letting-in of another year; some dark-haired estate worker – Catchpole, these last few years – bringing in coal and salt and bread on the first stroke of midnight, wishing a good new year to one and all and receiving a glass of whisky in return.

  And she wasn’t depressed and fighting tears because all at once everything seemed to go flat and the party abruptly ended. There had been more to it than that. Her strange feelings began, she supposed, when she took the photographs; a feeling that today, now, she must have all the young ones on record; capture their youth and their beauty so that nothing and no one, could take it away from her.

  They had started with luncheon in the conservatory which normally was closed for the winter, the plants removed to the safety of Catchpole’s greenhouses; but this year, because the young ones wanted dancing, Mary had lit paraffin stoves and placed them in corners with the nursery fireguards to protect them.

  This morning, the sky was a bright, winter blue and a slant of brief December sunlight glanced through the glass of the conservatory roof, whitening last night’s thin covering of snow outside into blinding brilliance. This was the time, she knew, as she went in search of her camera.

  ‘Quickly, all of you!’ she had called. ‘I want a snap of you together.’ The light would never be so good. ‘Now whilst you are all looking so smart – come on! Hurry!’

  She arranged them in a group with the open glass doors framing the Christmas tree in the drawing room a little to their left. The Clan. Her six young Suttons almost grown up and each one a delight.

  So they had smiled for the camera because today they were especially happy, then returned to their dancing.

  They were beautiful, she insisted. Bas and Keth tall and straight and Drew so like Giles it was uncanny. And Kitty, such an imp, so attractive that eyes were drawn to her the minute she came into a room. Even Tatiana. The Clan still called her Tatty, though her coltishness was fast disappearing and she grew more like Anna every day.

  But of them all, Daisy was the brightest star. She with her pale blonde hair and eyes so blue you had to notice them. Dressed today in rose pink with her blue daisy pinned to the collar of her frock.

  Julia recalled the giving of that daisy-shaped sapphire brooch at Daisy’s christening more than sixteen years ago. Drew had been two, then; that little boy who had saved her sanity.

  Irritably she tried to close down her thoughts, poking ash from the fire, placing more logs to burn. She poured whisky into a glass, not because she wanted it but because there was nothing else to do, but think. And she did not want to think about Nathan because she had been doing just that on and off all day, though why, she did not know.

  Lately, she had thought about him differently; wanted, sometimes, to feel his closeness in the night. Yet there her imaginings always ended because she could never envisage Nathan as a lover nor could she want him the way she had shamelessly wanted – needed – Andrew.

  Yet for all that it might have been good to have a closeness with him; one that did not demand what could only ever belong to Andrew. That closeness might well have been had not Nathan loved and wanted her as any normal man might.

  She accepted, now, that he must always have loved her and if sometimes lately she felt guilt at the loneliness she had forced upon him, she could always find mitigation – absolution, even – for what she had done to his life.

  Nathan should not have loved her when he knew she was Andrew’s; should have found someone else – heaven only knew, he’d had time enough. Twenty years, almost.

  But Nathan loved as she loved – once, and for all time – though he had said he would never ask anything of her she was not prepared to give him and would wait for as long as it took. Twice since he asked her she had almost broached the subject again. Almost, because it hadn’t happened. Things, on the surface, had reverted to what they had always been between them and not by so much as a look, a touch or a whisper had Nathan indicated that he might ask her again.

  Why, then, did she sometimes want him to ask her again to marry him and why, perversely, did she hope he never would? Was it the talk of war? Surely there wouldn’t, couldn’t be another one so soon after? It was, it really was, only people like Winston Churchill growling out warnings about German military might that made people worry. Warmonger, they were calling him and people like him. And there wasn’t going to be a war even though, since summer, fighting had intensified in Spain, with German-built planes bombing Spanish civilians.

  Yet Jewish people were being forced to leave Germany and Austria, she frowned. Could it really be true they were the cause of everything that went wrong in Germany – even the burning of the Reichstag building?

  No! The warmongers were wrong! She had talked to Alice about it and Alice too said they were. Dear, precious Alice. She had come early, today, carefully carrying Drew’s birthday cake and bearing her brightly-wrapped present. A Fair Isle pullover she had knitted herself and Drew had loved it and hugged her and said, ‘Thank you, Lady.’ He still called her Lady.

  Julia tilted her glass, trickling whisky down her throat. If Nathan kissed her – if he came, that was – her breath would smell of it and she wouldn’t care. And where was he when he’d said he would come?

  Five more minutes. Just five minutes she would give him, then she would do the rounds of the house, switch off the lights and go to bed, and weep.

  He came ten minutes later. She heard his car wheels on the gravel of the drive and went at once to the front door.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. It was the old ones, you know. They like to talk about the way things used to be. New year’s eve seems to bring it on.’ He placed a hand on each of her shoulders, bending to kiss each cheek. ‘Happy new year, Julia …’

  She closed her eyes as he did so, making a little moue with her mouth, breathing deeply so she wouldn’t chide him for his lateness.

  ‘Come in, Nathan. Suppose you could do with a drink?’

  ‘Just a small one – if you’ll join me.’

  ‘I’ve already had one.’ Oh, what the heck? She was too miserable, too apprehensive, ever to get tipsy tonight.

  She handed him a glass, then raised her own, wishing him a happy new year, trying hard to smile. Then suddenly she said. ‘I’m glad you came. I thought you weren’t going to. I’d already given you up – decided to go to bed and have a good weep.’

  ‘But why? Is something the matter? Tell me, Julia?’

  ‘Oh, it’s anything or nothing.’ She sat on the hearthrug at his feet, kicking off her shoes, leaning her back against the sofa. ‘It’s a feeling I’ve had most of the day – like something’s going to happen to my world. All at once, I just had to take a photo of the Clan,’ she rushed on. ‘Without any warning, I knew I had to have them all as they were this afternoon; my six younglings. I hope the light was good enough. I desperately need them to come out all right.’

  ‘Why the feeling, Julia?’

  ‘I don’t know. A goose walked over my grave, I suppose. I love them all so. I’ve watched them grow up. They’re so young, so – so innocent, almost. I’d kill to defend them, Nathan.’

  ‘Defend them from what, from whom?’

  ‘That’s it – I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. After the last one, we said Germany mustn’t ever re-arm, yet the first thing Baldwin did as Prime Minister was to agree that Germany could have a navy, and now they’ve got an army and an air force.

  ‘Then t
he Italians marched into Abyssinia. Why? And who tried to stop them or tried to stop Hitler sending troops into the Rhineland? And now they’re fighting in Spain. The only good thing about last year is that we got a decent king and queen out of it.’

  ‘Julia, be a love and pour me another – a small one? And whilst you’re doing it, try to listen to what I’m going to say? I don’t think we are heading for war with Germany. Hider is a Fascist; what he fears, I’m almost sure, is Communism. I think if he’s ever foolish enough to fight anyone, it’ll be the Russians.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ She grasped at the small straw of comfort.

  ‘Who can be sure of anything? But you asked me, Julia, and I’ve told you what I believe. So what else is bothering you, because something is.’

  ‘You know me too well, Nathan Sutton.’

  ‘I do. In all your moods. So out with it?’

  ‘It’s Drew – something he said; said innocently, I’m sure of it, but he was talking about Tatty. They had die gramophone in the conservatory for dancing and Drew said Tatty was going to teach him how to Tango – the way they do it in France.

  ‘Then he remarked that she was growing up, now, and she wasn’t half bad, he said. “Tatty’s getting nicer, isn’t she, mother, and she’s getting prettier, too, just like Aunt Anna.”

  ‘I tell you, Nathan, my stomach hit the floor. What if Drew was to fall in love with her? He can’t – mustn’t – love her and we can’t ever tell him why. Oh, he realizes that Daisy is his half-sister, and that’s all above board, but we can’t tell him that Tatty is, too. He’d have to know, then, about Elliot and Alice and he’d be broken-hearted – mother, too. All the lies we told, Nathan …

  ‘White lies, to protect the innocent.’

  ‘And to cheat Pendenys? Rowangarth would have passed to your father when Giles died, but for Drew – and the title, too.’

  ‘No, Julia. No cheating. Alice and Giles married whilst she was pregnant, before Drew was born. Giles was entitled to suppose that Drew was his, claim him as his own – which he gladly did. Giles knew the score, when he married Alice. It was his idea. So no more worrying about Drew and Tatiana because it just won’t happen. I’d be prepared to promise you that.’