20
The next day Daisy returned to Rose Cottage after a day spent wandering round the farm on the estate and going for one of her lone walks down the lanes. It was springtime, a time of renewal, when the buds were on the trees and birds were building nests. All around her was the wonderful feeling of growth. She had lain down under a tree and fallen asleep in the grass, something she was doing a lot these days, now that she was finally free of night shifts and living too closely with other people. Space suddenly meant so much to her, and silence, except that it made her sleepy.
There was a sports car in the driveway when she arrived back, probably some former Fly Boy trying to make sense of civilian life, she thought, aware that she wasn’t looking her best. Her hair was tousled, her cheeks red and her eyes still heavy with sleep – and there he was, in the sitting room, Peter Bradley, with his back to her, thankfully.
She saw him out of the corner of her eye and instantly decided not to turn her head and officially see him. Instead she moved very quietly along the passageway to the kitchen and went up the back stairs to her room. Then she lay on her bed and thought how intolerable the whole thing was, this man, this old man, chasing after her. The thing was sick and he had no right. Mar had at least encouraged him, probably even invited him, and she had no right, either.
No, that was going a bit far, it was Mar’s house after all, she had every right to invite into it whoever she wanted, even weird eccentrics and oddities, but that didn’t mean Daisy had to get involved with them. She didn’t want this, didn’t want romance or closeness or love, the very thought of involvement made her feel queasy.
There had to be a way out. No one had seen her coming in, so if she could get out again they wouldn’t know she had come back. She kept the light out and in the early nightfall packed a few things in a bag, wrote a note for Mar saying she’d popped off to meet up with one of the girls and would be back in a couple of days. Then she crept downstairs, listening for voices and footsteps, looking around furtively every few moments.
‘Going somewhere nice?’ a voice said pleasantly from behind her. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, did I make you jump? I was in my room, changing for dinner.’
She felt like a child caught sneaking out without permission, but tried for all the calmness and coolness in her repertoire. ‘I was going off to spend a couple of days with a friend,’ she said.
‘Oh, I see,’ Peter smiled, walking downstairs with her. ‘Female, I hope?’
‘That has nothing whatsoever to do with you,’ she replied primly.
‘Well, it has, really, Daisy, as well you know,’ he teased. ‘I won’t stand for lovers, I’m not one of these moral liberals.’
He walked in front of her to the bottom of the stairs then turned to face her. Standing on the second step her eyes were level with his.
‘I would think it very cruel if you were to hurt me like that, Daisy,’ he said solemnly, then he turned and went into the sitting room, leaving her standing there, perplexed.
There was the mass sound of various voices from the sitting room, then Mar came bounding out and found her where Peter had left her. ‘You’re not going now?’ she demanded. ‘I mean, Daisy, my darling, you can meet your friend tomorrow. Surely you can have dinner with us?’
‘Mar,’ Daisy said, putting her arms loosely around Mar’s neck and looking into her eyes, ‘stop this, please. I can’t take it, honestly. I can’t. When I’m under pressure I run, I can’t help it, and I don’t want him or anyone. I have my reasons, Mar.’
‘Daisy, my darling girl,’ Mar said, reaching up and smoothing Daisy’s hair from her face. ‘It’s only dinner, it isn’t white slavery.’
And so Daisy stayed. She had gone back upstairs, bathed, changed into one of Dotty’s gowns and joined Mar, Par, a selection of friends and neighbours, and Peter, of course. She kept her eyes away from him at all times, as she had once done with someone else at this very table, but she could feel his on her and had to fight the urge to get up from the table and run. Then her eyes filled as she thought of that first time she had been to Rose Cottage and had avoided Frank Moran all evening.
She was acting true to form, she mused, whenever there was anything she felt as a threat, she killed it with rudeness and took to her heels. It was, as she had told Mar, what she did. The slightest hint of closeness overwhelmed her, so she ran, just as she had kept running until Frank was nearly dead, and then she had lost him.
She had no idea if Dotty had been right about hearing being the last thing to go, or if Frank had heard her as he lay dying, but during those last days and nights she’d told him how much she regretted running and wished she could turn the clock back. It was too late, but maybe that was why she had told him. If he had lived she probably wouldn’t have said a word, she would have chosen safety and silence. At twenty-five years old she still couldn’t face any kind of closeness, not closeness with men at any rate, and so she was alone and that was how she would stay.
Sitting at the table that night she looked up and met Peter’s eyes. He seemed a nice enough man, if slightly odd, and she felt an attraction to him, but there was nothing she could do, she decided. She could only be as she was.
The next morning she slept late and had breakfast in her room, hoping that by the time she finally appeared he would have left; but a note arrived on her tray with the eggs and bacon asking her to join him downstairs when she felt up to it.
It might well be a good idea, she thought. If she could talk to him seriously she might be able to make him see that his attentions were unwanted and could lead nowhere, that she honestly could never be interested in him. As she came downstairs, her speech arranged and rehearsed ready to be delivered in the sitting room, he shouted, ‘There you are! Come on!’ and walked outside to an MG two-seater.
‘I didn’t know that was yours,’ she said, looking at it.
‘Of course it is,’ he smiled. ‘I’m a company man, a Morris Motors company man, what else would I drive? Get in, I’ll take you to meet your friend.’
‘You know perfectly well there was – is – no friend, Peter. I was trying to escape.’
‘Get in anyway,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘We need to talk.’
Sitting in the MG with the hood down there was little chance of hearing each other, so she used the time to rehearse her speech again. He pulled up under a tree in a lane and turned to her.
‘Daisy, we have to get this sorted out,’ he said.
She shook her head and laughed.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘We met three days ago and here you are, turning serious and sorting things out. What is there to sort out?’
‘I am deadly serious about you,’ he said. ‘I fell in love with you the minute I set eyes on you.’
‘No,’ she replied, grimacing, ‘stop it, I don’t want this.’
‘And,’ he continued, ‘I told you the truth at Nuffield Place the other night. I pulled rank to be your escort, though Mar had told me about you. Now I don’t care how long this takes, though I’d prefer not to hang around, but I will not give up on you.’
‘You make me sound like a project,’ she said quietly.
‘Well that’s because you’ve made yourself into a project. It doesn’t have to be this way, but if you insist then that’s how it must be. But I will not go away.’
‘Peter, I think you’re insane, but try to understand that I don’t want the whole domestic thing. I don’t want to get married and become a housewife and mother.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t, it’s my choice.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ he smiled. ‘Something or someone has scared you, but we’ll get over it.’
‘Look, there was someone, he died in the war,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’ she asked, shocked.
‘Mar told me.’
‘How does Mar know?’
‘Mar knows a great deal, don’
t ever underestimate her. She said there was a sadness about you and she guessed there was a man involved.’
‘But I didn’t tell anyone, not ever!’
‘Maybe you’re not as dark as you like to think. Look, Daisy, I loved someone once as well – my wife.’
‘Yes, Mar told me that, too,’ she said wryly.
‘So I know what it’s like to lose someone, but that made me determined not to waste a minute of what was left of my life, because it can be snuffed out very easily and quickly. You know that as well as anyone. Not that I expected to meet someone else, but there we are, you came along.’
‘Stop saying that!’ He touched her hand and she pulled it away. ‘I mean it, Peter, you have to stop this. I can’t deal with it. I don’t like people touching me.’
‘It’ll get easier, Daisy,’ he said gently. ‘It’ll get easier.’
When Peter left Rose Cottage that afternoon it was with the firm intention of returning as soon as possible, and he didn’t care who knew it. He had told Mar and Par that he was going to marry Daisy as soon as she saw sense, and Daisy said he was the one who needed to see sense, and they grinned at her as though she were a moody child. She felt uncomfortable, besieged, yet she had to admit to herself that there was nothing threatening about him. Peter’s bullying was of the most gentle and affectionate kind, and he was the most gentle, kind and affectionate man she had ever met; not as loud and booming as the Bentleys but every bit as open with his feelings. He wasn’t like younger men she had encountered, he was a man from another generation with manners that fitted a different age, even if he was peculiar. And he was that, too, he could be disconcertingly odd, but he looked her in the eye, she realised with a start. Right from the beginning he’d looked her in the eye, and she couldn’t remember that happening since she was thirteen years old.
Yes, she did. Calli. Eileen’s lovely boy had always looked her in the eye. She could close her eyes and see him still, those serious dark eyes looking at her from a distance and his lips saying ‘Poor Daisy’.
Peter had never laid a hand on her either, except when they were dancing at the cocktail party, and, looking back, there had been nothing objectionable about it, apart from the fact that she hadn’t wanted to dance with him. In the car during their chat, he had briefly touched her hand and she had pulled it away and said she didn’t like to be touched. So, when he was leaving Rose Cottage he obviously remembered and made no attempt to embrace her. She had noticed that. Instead he had blown her kiss, which reminded her of Bruiser and made her run to her room and lie on the bed for a long time crying. All those ghosts, so many ghosts in her life, and she was so young.
Peter returned to Rose Cottage three days later and continued to woo Daisy – if behaving as if he owned her was a form of wooing, Daisy thought. Wherever she was he was by her side, as though their being together was an established fact, and somehow she couldn’t shake him off. Not that she tried, because he had her at a complete disadvantage. She was a guest in Mar and Par’s home and he was an old friend who was being pleasant and attentive towards her.
There wasn’t the slightest feeling that he was coercing her or trying to force a relationship on her, yet that was what he was doing. In times past she would have delivered a mouthful that would have stripped that easy smile from his face, but she couldn’t do it in these surroundings, in the home of their friends; and, curiouser still, she found that she didn’t want to. In some ways, she thought with a start, it was like being with Bruiser again, and he reminded her of Frank, too, and his refusal to believe that she wanted no contact with him.
When Peter left again the next day she felt oddly out of sorts and thought she was coming down with a cold, then suddenly she realised that the coldness she felt was the empty space beside her that he had somehow made his own. Not only was this strange man wearing down her resolve, but he was doing so in such a gentle way that she didn’t object any longer, didn’t want to object either. It made her feel out of her own control when she had prided herself on being the one always in control.
And Mar watched in kind delight. Mar, who she had deceived and lied to, watched Daisy being worn down and smiled at the scene.
‘Why don’t you phone him?’ Mar asked one bright, warm June evening.
‘Who?’ Daisy asked, looking out of the front window of Rose Cottage, her arms crossed around her waist.
‘You know perfectly well who!’ Mar chuckled, only being Mar it seemed to reverberate through the entire house.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Mar,’ Daisy replied. ‘I’ve been thinking it was time I moved on, went to London for a while, maybe go abroad now that I’m rested up.’
‘Oh, stuff and nonsense! You’re missing Peter Bradley!’
‘I am not!’
‘Daisy,’ Mar said, advancing on her, taking hold of her by the elbows and shaking her, ‘you are such a bright girl, but you can also be incredibly stupid. Phone the man!’
‘But what should I say?’ Daisy asked helplessly. ‘I’m not good at these things, I’m far better at shooting them down!’
‘You won’t have to say a lot,’ Mar said, hugging her. ‘At the sound of your voice he’ll jump into that ridiculous little car and be on the doorstep in a second.’
So she picked up the phone, dialled the number, and when someone answered she said it was Miss Sheridan for Mr Bradley.
There was a pause then the voice came on again.
‘Mr Bradley will be right with you, miss.’
‘Oh, right. Fine.’
‘You can hang up now, miss.’
‘But you said he’d be right with me …’
‘He will, miss,’ the voice said, and she was sure she could detect a hint of amusement. ‘He’s in the car and he’ll be right with you, miss.’
‘Oh. Thank you …’ She replaced the receiver.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Mar boomed. ‘Mar knows everything!’
And as they hugged, Daisy thought, not quite everything, and decided she would have to talk to her, but not till after she’d talked to Peter.
By the time Peter arrived at Rose Cottage, the Bentleys who were at home had whipped themselves and everyone else within reach into such a frenzy of excitement that Daisy could hardly find a way through the throng. It was just how they were: cheerful, happy, loud people who conspired to banish the most fleeting moment of silence and involved themselves fully in the lives of their friends. They were hopelessly noisy and outgoing and without the slightest inkling that other people might wish things done differently. Indeed, it was very hard to believe Par had been involved in war work so secret that he would never talk about it to anyone. It simply didn’t occur to them that whatever was or was not happening between Daisy and Peter, they might welcome some privacy in order to discuss it. It was part of their charm that once an event was in full swing it was accorded a life of its own and the stars were relegated to merely being supporting acts.
Knowing this was one of the secrets of coping with the family, Peter, as an old friend, was aware that the party would swing without him and Daisy. He motioned to her with his head to meet him outside and whisked her away in the MG to where they had had their last outdoor conversation. It was a beautiful night, as balmy and warm as the best June nights should be, and he produced a ring in a small box.
‘Put it away, Peter,’ Daisy said. ‘This time we really do need to sort this out.’
He put the box into his pocket and sat, hands resting on the steering wheel, looking at her.
‘So this is it?’ he smiled. ‘Make or break time. I’m ready for a speedy getaway, as you can see.’
She nodded. ‘I have some things to tell you.’
So she told him about her life in Newcastle, about her father and his hopeless need to be Irish, even though he wasn’t, and about the family before him who were. Then about her mother who had been a well-known singer, until she’d married and had children, ending any real chance of a career, but she had been sick from then on anyway,
so it didn’t really matter. When Kay was born it was obvious she had inherited her mother’s musical talent, and she was beautiful, and strange in a way, but was going to make her mother’s dreams come true. She explained how she had cared for her mother, run the house and looked after Kay all her life, because Kay had the voice of an angel and was going to be a star. She hadn’t minded then, but had begun to as she got older and understood that her dreams, ambitions – her life – were to be sacrificed for the greater good of the family.
Daisy left out certain bits, Dessie mainly, but told Peter her sister had married and had a family, and that ‘her people’, as Mar called the Sheridans, weren’t abroad for the duration, but had all been wiped out in a German air raid. He reached out and took her hand and this time she didn’t flinch.
‘There’s something more you have to know,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll have heard from Mar and probably others, too, that I had a high old time at parties during the war.’
‘You don’t have to tell me any of this,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes, I do,’ she replied. ‘People will say I’m a good-time girl who married you for your money. You have to know if that’s true.’
‘Oh, no,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t spoil the illusion! I just love the idea that I’ve been seduced by a sexy young thing! Think of the sympathy I’ll get! No, please, Daisy, leave it at that!’
She glared at him and he laughed. ‘The thing is, you silly goose, that the advantage here is on one side – mine. You’re young, beautiful, and that body – what? You think I hadn’t noticed? I shall parade you for all to see and every male will be eaten up with jealousy and think me a helluva stud!’
‘You will not parade me about!’
‘I bloody well will,’ Peter said. ‘You forget, you’ll be marrying me for my money, you’ll be bought and paid for, my girl. I shall have my money’s worth!’ He leaned over and pulled her to him, kissing her hair and laughing.
Daisy's Wars Page 29