Daisy's Wars

by Meg Henderson

  Still nothing, then Kathleen lifted a hand and pointed to the door.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  Kathleen closed her eyes then opened them again.

  ‘Do you want me to get someone for you, is that it?’

  Kathleen shook her head just once again and Joan looked at her helplessly, trying to decipher the limited communication.

  ‘Him,’ Kathleen croaked. ‘It was him.’

  Joan looked at her, wondering how much knowledge those few words covered, but she had no right to patronise this woman. ‘Yes,’ she said sadly, ‘it was him.’

  Kathleen pushed her head back against her pillows and closed her eyes, and Joan tried to comfort her.

  ‘Mrs Sheridan,’ she said helplessly, ‘Daisy truly is all right. I’ve made sure she’s all right, please don’t be concerned.’

  Kathleen didn’t reply, but lay there trying to breathe. Joan put the note in her hand and moved towards the door.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Kathleen’s voice came from the bed, a faint whisper. ‘I couldn’t help her.’

  ‘You heard?’ Joan said.

  Kathleen nodded. ‘And before,’ she whispered. ‘She always said he was bad … she was … right. I couldn’t …’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t, don’t blame yourself,’ Joan said kindly, going back to the bedside. ‘I always got the feeling from the little she said about the situation that he’d had his eye on her for a long time.’

  Kathleen nodded more firmly this time.

  ‘Let her down …’ she wheezed, and was immediately lost in a paroxysm of moist coughing.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Joan said helplessly. ‘What could you have done?’

  Tears were coursing down Kathleen’s cheeks, more from concern about Daisy, Joan was convinced, than from the fit of coughing.

  ‘Not even her own father,’ Kathleen’s voice rasped, then shook her head slightly, her eyes closed.

  Joan Johnstone felt wracked with pity for the woman, imagining what it must have been like for her to know what Daisy’s life had entailed. No one else had noticed, no one but Kathleen herself, so there had been nowhere for her daughter to turn for help. She thought of Kathleen lying in this room and listening, and then she pictured poor Daisy, thinking that if she didn’t cry out Kathleen would be saved the knowledge of knowing what Dessie was doing to her. Only Daisy was an innocent, she wasn’t to know that even if she didn’t scream out, the accompanying sounds were unmistakable if you already had the knowledge.

  ‘Can’t tell Michael anything,’ Kathleen cried. ‘Still, should’ve done something. My own Daisy!’

  ‘Mrs Sheridan, please don’t distress yourself. Daisy would be beside herself if she knew you were upsetting yourself over this,’ Joan said, laying one of her own delicate, ladylike hands on Kathleen’s swollen one and noticing with some horror how pink her own was in comparison.

  ‘Cool,’ Kathleen whispered, and Joan immediately moved her hand to the woman’s forehead. Kathleen nodded slightly with gratitude.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Sheridan,’ Joan said. ‘I’m very fond of Daisy. I’ll be keeping in close touch with her and I’ll keep you up-to-date. I would imagine her father won’t approve of what she’s done, she’ll be an outcast to him, so it will be our secret; yours, mine and Daisy’s. We’ll say our families were friends in the old days; I’ve already said as much to that beast at the door. All right?’

  A slight smile turned up the edges of Kathleen’s mouth as Joan left. ‘Oh, by the way, Mrs Sheridan,’ Joan said. ‘My father really was a great fan of yours, he had quite a crush on Kathleen Clancy.’ It was a lie, but what the hell. ‘It was lovely to meet you and I’ll be back the moment I have any news of Daisy. I promise you, you have nothing to worry about where she is concerned. Good night.’

  Kathleen’s hand lifted slightly in farewell, but her eyes were again half-closed. Dessie was waiting outside the bedroom door.

  ‘Ah, Mr Doyle,’ Joan said pleasantly, ‘how nice of you to show me out,’ and she nudged him in front of her and out the door. Then she turned quickly, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, yanked him down a foot to her eye-level and rammed him against the outside wall, leaving him so shocked that he didn’t even protest.

  ‘Listen to me, you evil, mucky bastard,’ she said in thickest, purest Geordie, ‘I know what you did to Daisy last night.’

  He tried to shake her off, laughing, and she tightened her grip.

  ‘Keep those arms by your sides or I’ll scream blue murder,’ she ordered. ‘Who do you think they’ll believe is being assaulted, you or me?’

  Dessie thought for a moment then stopped moving.

  ‘I was brought up in Byker, laddie,’ she said menacingly, ‘there’s nothing I don’t know about how to deal with scum like you, so don’t try anything.’

  ‘She asked for it,’ he said, in a bravado attempt to sound casual. ‘She’s no angel, no matter what tale she told you. She was all for it.’

  ‘She was a virgin, you bastard!’ Joan said furiously, slapping his face with the other hand that was holding her handbag, so that the clasp cut him across the nose as a bonus. ‘If she wanted to lose it there were real men out there for her to choose to lose it to. She’d never have picked you.’

  He opened his mouth, wiping the blood from his nose, and she silenced him.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I know,’ she told him, ‘and all I want you to be aware of is that in future when I come to see her mother I’ll carry a knife in my bag. If you ever come near enough I’ll cut your heart out and feed it to the nearest dog. Do you understand me?’ She shook him violently. ‘Do you understand?’ she demanded again.

  He didn’t reply but she knew males like him. She’d grown up with them just as Daisy had, even if she no longer looked or sounded as though she had, and she knew he understood. She let go of him, patted her hat, straightened her coat, put her bag back in position over her arm, and went home without looking back.

  She knew his type, could sense them a mile off. Brought up by an Irish mother who had convinced him the world was his oyster, no doubt, the kind who treated her sons like gods and her daughters like god-worshippers in training; she had never understood why Irish mothers did that. Then he had had the good fortune to find himself near to the Sheridans, to Kay in particular, a beautiful child by all accounts and with a talent that could make him money, see him leave his poor beginnings far behind. Only he had miscalculated and the sister he had treated like dirt had turned out to be the more beautiful woman, and she was smart with it; while apart from the voice Kay was dull and thick, and once she had grown up a bit and was no longer a cute little girl, nobody wanted her talent either. So there he was, trapped and bitter, but that didn’t mean he had the right to take it out on Daisy, to try to drag her down to his level, the nasty, vicious brute.

  She would make sure he learned a lesson before she was finished, she decided, stomping her way homewards. He’d regret meeting up with Joan Johnstone.

  Daisy, of course, knew nothing of this. She was far away by the time her former boss attacked her brother-in-law, and further away in mind. She had been thinking constantly about that night, reliving the horror in slow-motion, trying to make sense of it, and had come to the conclusion that rape was really about power, not really about sex at all. Compelling a woman to have sex against her wishes, either by physical force or mental bullying was, to the male psyche, the ultimate declaration of dominance. In attacking Daisy, Dessie wasn’t just taking his pleasure from a particularly attractive female, he was paying her back for all the open dislike and snubs over the years. And that included her attempts to better herself, because to his mind it implied that she regarded him and where they both came from as beneath her. Plus, that night she had told him what she thought of him for getting her sister pregnant again so soon after the birth of her first child. She had assumed the upper hand and told him off, so he had brought her down a peg or two with a simple, brutal act of aggression
to teach her that she was only a female and that she meant nothing.

  But it wasn’t that simple. For Dessie the matter was over once he had demonstrated his power by teaching the sexy but uppity Daisy Sheridan a lesson, but he’d done more than that. He had changed Daisy’s entire life forever.

  9

  The first thing Daisy, Violet, Celia and the others discovered when they finally arrived at RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire after a sixteen-hour train journey was that they weren’t expected, or only in the vaguest of ways. There they were, anxious to do their bit, but there were no means of doing anything. Even the food provision was minimal, and on the first morning they were handed a thick slice of bread, a lump of cheese, two pickled onions and a mug of tea.

  The majority arrived wearing summer dresses and sandals, quite reasonably thinking they would be kitted out with uniforms: only there weren’t any. As in most aspects of the war, Britain was ill-prepared and ill-equipped to deal with the WAAFs. Neither was there much idea of what to do with them, beyond the things women were considered to excel in, like cooking, washing dishes and sewing, all of which Daisy had decided she would have nothing to do with.

  The WAAF director had further problems in that the Equipment Directorate had recently moved to Harrogate, complicating every normal difficulty tenfold. In desperation she sent her staff out to look for suitable clothing in the London stores, and meantime the influx of newcomers would have to train as best they could, wearing civilian clothing.

  War was officially declared two days later, on 3rd September, but Daisy’s intake had even more immediate considerations than that. At RAF Innsworth they were undergoing full medicals, parading naked but for a towel about their waists in front of the medics, who were really more on the look-out for lice or signs of pregnancy than ill-health. A WAAF officer told them encouragingly, ‘Just give them a quick flash, girls, and it will all be over in no time!’

  Before the Dessie incident, being near-naked in front of a group of men would have bothered Daisy greatly, but it seemed to her that as the worst had already happened this was of no real importance. She was relieved that they were allowed to wear towels round their waists, so that she could hide the bruising on her legs, and she took care to keep her arms behind her back as much as possible so that no one would question her black-and-blue wrists.

  What could she have said? How could she have explained them away? Leg bruises could have happened in a fall, but the ones on her wrists were so obviously what they were, that someone had held her very brutally, and there were few circumstances where that could happen.

  It was soon over. She had been too wrapped up in her own terrors to understand that there were too many girls to examine for the medics to indulge in close inspection, though they did make a point of sifting through the hair of each one for nits, which she did take exception to.

  All around she heard cries of ‘FFI!’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she whispered to Violet, who was behind her in the line.

  ‘Free from infection,’ she whispered back, introducing Daisy to her first piece of service slang.

  Daisy shrugged, wondering why they just didn’t say that. ‘I suppose it’s better than NFFI,’ she said quietly, and Violet looked back quizzically. ‘Not free from infection,’ Daisy said, and they giggled together.

  Suddenly Daisy realised that she had never envisaged laughing again, that she had expected to remain as frozen as Dessie’s attack had left her. But life hadn’t stopped after all, it would go on, and she would move forward.

  ‘What are you two laughing at?’ Celia asked in front of them. ‘Are you making fun of my fried eggs?’ she demanded, covering her breasts with both hands.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Violet snorted back. ‘We can’t even see ‘em! We were wondering why you had your head on back-to-front, Celia, but that is your front, after all!’

  Celia leaned around Daisy in a vain attempt to pinch any area of Violet’s flesh.

  ‘I’m spoiled for choice,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘I mean, there’s so much of you! You’ll never blow away in the wind, will you?’ She stopped and looked at Daisy. ‘And as for you, Daisy Sheridan,’ she said mournfully, ‘well, what can I say?’

  Since their arrival the three girls had stuck together and were therefore placed in the same hut.

  ‘Look at it!’ Violet said, surveying it distastefully from outside. ‘It’s more like a chicken coop!’

  Celia stared at the scene. ‘I’ve got news for you,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what it is. I know chicken shit when I smell it.’

  ‘Well, I have news for you, ladies,’ Daisy laughed. ‘It’s now officially home.’

  ‘These Newcastle broads!’ Violet snorted.

  ‘They can’t help it,’ Celia agreed, ‘it’s what they’re used to.’

  Once inside they were shocked again.

  ‘These are beds?’ Celia moaned, looking at her mattress, consisting of three hard slabs – known as ‘biscuits’ – in a row. ‘They’re made of concrete, how are we supposed to sleep on that?’ She picked up a pillow. ‘And this,’ she wailed. ‘It’s made of straw! I can’t sleep on that!’

  ‘Yes, you already said,’ Violet commented wryly, ‘but you can forget about sleeping anyway, there’s no space between the beds to get into them. I reckon we’re supposed to pole-vault in and out!’

  There was a lot of crying in the hut that night, from girls who simply didn’t know what had hit them but were only too aware that there was no escape, for even if they ran away, the girls were told, they would be dragged back. For Daisy, though, it was a time of starting again. This new life was tough, but what she’d had was tougher, and she found herself reverting to type with the others: Daisy the carer started caring for the other girls.

  All her life that was what she had done, taking on adult responsibilities long before she should have, long before she was truly able to, if the truth were told, but there had been no choice. She was older than her years, and naturally slid into the role of mother hen, even if she was in the company of girls of her own age for the first time. They were all together in the same awful circumstances and needed each other to get by. She was learning much about service life, but more than anything she was learning how strong women could be and how much easier they could make life when they stuck together. With Joan Johnstone she’d had the closest relationship of her life, but with the other WAAFs she began to appreciate how supportive female friendships could be. In those first days, weeks and months she heard different accents, found herself in close proximity with girls from different backgrounds, and yet it didn’t matter. It was as if they had all reached the same conclusion at the same time: that they were in this thing together and had to get through it together.

  As one they endured injections against every disease known at that time and lectures on subjects as varied as history, VD and military life. They were introduced to the delights of square-bashing in pouring rain and high winds, then sitting through lectures on ‘toilet paper, use of’, which came down to ‘one piece per sitting, one sitting per day’. This was delivered by a male officer, naturally, followed by an hour and a half of classical music played on a gramophone as they sat soaked through, water dripping off them into pools on the floor, all of them cold, shivering and sneezing. Fifteen minutes of wearing their gas masks came next, having first rubbed anti-dim solution into the glass of the eye-pieces to prevent them steaming up as they breathed, and they learned how to adjust the respirators within five seconds of hearing the rattle that sounded for a gas alert.

  ‘I don’t know why, maybe it was just the silliness of the day, but suddenly it struck us all as funny,’ Daisy wrote to her mother, via Joan Johnstone. ‘There were 250 girls there, and every time we breathed there was a sort of snort. We looked and sounded like a roomful of black pigs, and Violet, Celia and I started to laugh, which didn’t please our officer a lot.’

  There were lessons on marching, saluting and, more importantly, who to
salute to, and all of it seemed like a waste of time. But those weeks gave them the basics, as far as the discipline of military life was concerned, and when they looked back on it very few of the girls objected as much as they had while it was happening.

  After the Declaration of War everyone had expected the Germans to come visiting immediately, and all eyes were trained on the skies for the predicted hail of bombs, but what they got instead was the ‘Phoney War’ that ran from September 1939 till April 1940. When nothing happened the entire country relaxed.

  ‘You remember all those children on the train with you that day?’ Joan wrote to Daisy a few weeks after she’d left. ‘Well they’re all home again.’ This was a pattern repeated all over the country when the Germans didn’t arrive, not on foot, nor by tank or plane. All that happened during the ‘Phoney War’ was that both sides had the opportunity to send planes over each other’s territory to gather reconnaissance photos and to size each other up.

  At least it gave the WAAFs breathing space to gather together their uniforms in a bits-and-pieces, haphazard way.

  As autumn passed in a blur of personal indignities and basic training, Daisy and the other Innsworth girls were sent on to a training camp, West Drayton, on the outskirts of London. They would become a select little band who were able to talk of their early days there as ‘the nightmare winter at West Drayton’.

  As if the harshness of that winter wasn’t bad enough, when the London Blitz began they spent most nights quaking in fear in trenches that were inches deep in freezing water. After a few weeks, blue-belted RAF raincoats and berets arrived, complete with metal RAF badges and navy armbands with WAAF in red. Some girls even managed to take delivery of grey lisle stockings and a small quantity of black lace-up shoes, though they didn’t always fit. It would take till February 1940 to lay hands, by various means, on enough shoes for them – except for size eight and a half, for some reason. Skirts, it was discovered, wouldn’t be available till December, so slacks were issued temporarily. Then fleecy linings for the raincoats arrived, then gloves and cardigans, and it was discovered that for 7/6 of their own money, Moss Bros. of London would supply soft crowned caps with black patent peaks, making those who bought them the centre of attention at their bases.