Daisy's Wars

by Meg Henderson

  ‘I had to write “Gone away” on his letters and send them back!’ Eileen recalled.

  ‘Well, he was Mr Right, I was just too scared to admit it then. He was shot down in 1944, a few months after I saw you and Annie, and I was told he was dead, but he wasn’t. I saw him on TV in Australia and looked him up.’

  ‘Really? That must’ve been a helluva shock!’

  ‘You have no idea! Oh, hell, let’s not talk about it yet, I’m feeling so confused about it. Tell me about Annie.’

  ‘Well, this is where it gets very strange, as I said,’ Eileen said, glancing at Daisy. ‘You know I said Calli had the second sight? Annie has, too. When she was little she saw a man in the corner of her room, never questioned it. He was always there, she thought other people saw him too, and when she understood they didn’t she was too confused to say anything. It was Calli.’

  ‘My God, another shiver’s just gone up my spine!’

  ‘Think how I felt! It came out recently when her son – Gavin’s four, by the way – got annoyed because the man he saw had disappeared.’

  ‘The little boy saw him, too?’ Daisy was aghast.

  ‘The man had disappeared completely after the boys were buried, and Gavin was really angry, kept demanding to know where he’d gone, and bit by bit it came out. Annie eventually owned up, said all sorts of strange things had happened throughout her life, but she hadn’t mentioned any of them because she was scared it might cause a fuss. That’s the saddest thing. I was trying to give her a normal family life, but all those years she knew things weren’t right between Alex and me, she said she felt she had to watch what she said and did. Made me feel such a failure.’

  ‘Oh, stop it!’

  Then the photos came out, with much Aahing and Oohing.

  ‘Katie’s a redhead, full of life, a bit too full to be honest; built like me, too, or as I used to be.’

  ‘You don’t look that different.’

  ‘Oh, it’s true, old friends are the best friends!’ Daisy teased. ‘The thing I admire about her, though, is that she handles it so well. I hated all the leering that went on. I had to put on a show every time I walked into the NAAFI.’

  ‘Mae West!’ Eileen laughed.

  ‘Yes, that’s who it was – you guessed! But it doesn’t bother Katie, she just takes it all in her stride and gives them a look that would wither any man to a prune if they sidle up to her.’

  ‘You did exactly the same!’

  ‘Yes, but it honestly doesn’t bother her. I was terrified and mortified, I used to cringe inside.’

  ‘I think I guessed that, Daisy. A lot of us did, but we knew if we suggested you might be a sensitive soul you’d be annoyed.’

  ‘It was that obvious? And I thought I was carrying Mae off so well that she’d soon be out of a job! So where’s your Annie then?’

  ‘They’re on holiday; they live in the flat above. You’ll meet her some other time, she’ll be so eager to hear someone else tell her stories of her father.’

  ‘So what are you doing about his family, then?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Eileen sighed. ‘Annie says to leave it for now, something will turn up. She’s like that – very intuitive. She’s Calli’s daughter all right.’

  Pearl arrived the next evening and they spent the rest of the night talking about their days in the WAAFs, and how their lives had gone since then. Daisy told them about Frank, the whole story this time, about finding him again.

  ‘To tell the truth,’ she said, ‘I don’t know whether he was glad I’d found him or not.’

  ‘And what about you?’ Pearl asked.

  ‘I’m confused,’ she laughed. ‘Did I go looking for him because I wanted to see an old friend, or because Peter had died and I was lonely?’

  ‘You said he was Mr Right,’ Eileen said.

  ‘Yes, but things have happened, we’ve changed, all of us, haven’t we?’

  ‘You don’t seem happy to have left him in Australia, though,’ Pearl remarked. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know. Besides, I’m not the gorgeous creature I once was, am I? Things have moved about a bit, gravity has set in, there are wrinkles in places I can’t even see.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ Eileen said. ‘When you looked at him, what did you see?’

  ‘The scars at first, you can’t really miss them, but after a few minutes I didn’t notice them, strangely enough.’

  ‘And now, when you think of him,’ Pearl said quietly, ‘how do you see him?’

  Daisy thought for a moment and then looked at them. ‘I see him as he was!’ she replied with a shrug.

  ‘Do you know what strikes me as really funny?’ Eileen asked. ‘Here’s this woman who hated being judged on her looks, and here she sits, thinking this man can’t want anything to do with her because she thinks her looks have gone off a bit.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Daisy said sharply, and they all laughed.

  ‘But think of it, Daisy. He’s probably thinking you wouldn’t be interested in him because of his looks,’ Eileen suggested, ‘yet even with the scarring you still picture him as he was.’

  ‘And?’ she asked.

  ‘And he probably sees you as you were – not that you’ve changed one iota, of course!’

  After three days the old friends parted, each with their own thoughts on their shared memories, and promising to be in touch again soon. All that time had passed, Daisy thought, yet it had been as if they had last met six weeks ago. They had changed, yet they were the same. She remembered seeing Eileen and feeling sad that their friendship was now over, but it had been there waiting to be picked up again.

  Daisy flew down to Newcastle, determined to see again the city where she had grown up as an unwelcome incomer, the place where so much had happened that had led her to where she now was. Fenwicks was still there, a different enterprise but still a quality store, she noted. The basic layout of the city centre was still recognisable, and then she made her way to Guildford Place and was surprised so many of the old houses were still standing. There was a gap, though, between numbers 6 and 25, and somewhere in that gap was where she had once lived and where her family had died. Newish flats had been built over the crater, sometime during the 1950s she guessed, and they were three-storeys high, one above the old houses on either side.

  The strange thing was, though, that standing there looking at the flats, she could still see her old home, and, in a strange way, it was as if her family were still there. She could almost hear her mother’s tortured breathing, could hear Kay’s beautiful voice soaring, and could see her father coming out of a door that wasn’t there to go on his nightshift at the pit. She blotted Dessie out of her mind, he wasn’t part of her family, but apart from him and the horror he brought into her life, they were all there still. She could feel it.

  She wandered round the area, surprised that so much was still recognisable. Robinson’s Pork Shop was there, and Clough’s Sweet Shop; even the Ice Cream Parlour was still going strong. In her head she could hear as clear as day the voices she knew from when she was young. And when she turned round she could trace the route she had taken home from the shops, and almost see herself walking it and turning in where her door used to be, watching the ghost of herself as a young girl.

  She had been to the library and seen a picture of the devastation of that terrifying night in 1941, and she reassembled it in her head. Smoke mingled with steam from the fire crews’ hoses as the water fell on the burning remains of the houses. The voices of the rescuers trying to save those buried underneath intermingled with the sobs of the waiting relatives. And hanging in the air was the stench she knew so well and could never forget from her days in the tower, as metals, wood, material and human flesh burned together.

  She went to Heaton Cemetery and placed flowers on the mass grave where the unidentified pieces of the dead were buried. It didn’t seem enough, but there was nothing else she could do, so she turned to go and then thought for
a moment.

  There was one more thing she could do. She could say goodbye to them. When she left Guildford Place in 1939 she hadn’t said goodbye to any of them, so she could at least do it now. Standing with her hand on the headstone, she broke down in tears and it was a long time before she could get the words out.

  She wouldn’t come back here again, she knew that now. The Newcastle Hand had long lost its power, and she was leaving for the last time so much that had pained her and shaped her. She had spent only eighteen years here, hardly a lifetime. She no longer belonged to Newcastle, not even reluctantly, and it was time to break whatever vestiges of the hold it had ever had over her. So, after saying her goodbyes to those she cared about, she left without looking back.

  27

  Back home in Oxford she tried to go on with the life she had had there for the past thirty years. The family came to visit and went back to their own homes again, all of them trying to keep the traditions they had grown up with, each of these painful for being the first ones without Peter. There were birthdays, Easter, the Flower Show where Professor Theodore Quibbe no longer exhibited, Christmas, New Year, and the first snow-drops that, as if to mock them, were even earlier than in past years, so that they all heard his voice say ‘I told you so!’ and stood in a group weeping.

  Daisy spoke on the phone to Eileen and Pearl and paid a visit to Glasgow to meet Annie. There she told her as many stories about Calli as she could, watching the eagerness in eyes that were so like the lovely boy’s. Annie’s little boy, Gavin, a miniature of his grandfather, asked her if she knew a man who flew planes and asked her why she was so sad, when she thought she was putting on a very good show of being happy.

  Frank wrote from Australia, formal letters that gradually became gentler and more personal, then he stopped writing and she panicked in case he might be dead – again. When she phoned his home she was relieved to hear his voice, but he said he was finding it too hard to keep up the correspondence with her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she gasped, feeling afraid for some reason.

  ‘Daisy, I sometimes feel that it was cruel of you to contact me again,’ he said wearily.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So many things I had buried deep in the past came up again. My wife, she was a good woman, she cared for me and gave me children, but since your visit I’ve been feeling guilty about her, wondering if I ever gave her as much as she gave me, because the feelings I had for you all those years ago are still there. I keep wondering what might have been, and that’s disrespectful to my wife. I feel as though you’ve churned up my life for nothing. It might be easier if you left me to find out if I can settle down again.’

  Daisy was sick to her stomach when she replaced the receiver, but she knew what he meant. She had been wrestling with similar feelings. Why had she looked him up and told him he was her ‘someone’ and that she had sat by his bed as he lay on the brink of death? To absolve herself of blame for hurting him all those years ago? And if that was the case, she had hurt him all over again. And she had all the same feelings as he had, that was the truth of the matter.

  She had loved Peter, but it was a different kind of love from what she had felt for Frank: not less, but different, and she had agonised over what that said about their life together. Had she fooled Peter or had she fooled herself, not that there was any difference, because whoever was being fooled it debased the last thirty or more years of their life together. So, unable to make up her mind, she had kept in touch with Frank, for old time’s sake, she told herself, but the friendship was kept at a distance. She was safe, and it struck her that she had done that so many times in her life, put a distance between herself and anyone who threatened to get near. She had done it to Frank before, too.

  On the outside she seemed to be coping well. Everyone said she was looking better now that the first anniversary of Peter’s death had passed, but inside her the turmoil Peter had saved her from was raging again. She had always thought of herself as a strong woman – not as strong as others thought her, but strong enough – but she no longer felt like that and wasn’t sure what to do about anything.

  David came home that April, providing a welcome diversion and bringing with him a wife, a beautiful blonde Danish girl called Mette whom he’d met on his travels. Daisy wondered what Peter would have made of it, his easy-going, laidback, good-chap son arriving home already married, so when she paid her usual visit to his grave she told him, imagining his reaction.

  When she came back, David was waiting for her.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ she asked, perplexed.

  ‘Go down to that cemetery.’

  ‘Because your father’s buried there!’ she replied.

  ‘Yes, that’s the point, Mum, he’s buried there because he’s dead. You’re a young woman, why are you trying yourself to a piece of ground instead of living?’

  Daisy didn’t have an answer apart from the one she had already given.

  ‘You must be about the same age as Pop was when he married you,’ David said gently. ‘He had lost his wife, but he didn’t sit around talking to a headstone. He went out there and got himself a new woman and another family.’

  ‘Well, that’s the potted version,’ Daisy said defensively. ‘And it’s only been just over a year, David.’

  ‘That’s long enough,’ he said firmly. ‘Or were you thinking of going on like this for five years? Ten? The rest of your life?’

  Daisy couldn’t believe her own son was rounding on her when she hadn’t done anything wrong, as she told Eileen later on the phone. She was even more stunned when Eileen agreed with him.

  ‘Ask yourself, what would Peter say if he knew you were trotting up and down to his grave with bits of family news? And be honest, Daisy!’

  ‘He’d be annoyed, I suppose.’

  ‘You suppose?’

  ‘Well, yes, all right, he would be annoyed,’ she admitted. ‘What am I supposed to do? Register with a marriage bureau?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Eileen?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  Another silence. ‘Well what are you waiting for?’

  ‘For the penny to drop, Daisy, you clot!’

  ‘What penny?’

  ‘What,’ Eileen asked in an innocent voice, ‘ever happened to Mr Right, the Spit guy?’

  ‘Oh, him! He asked me not to write to him any more,’ Daisy shrugged.

  ‘I can hear you shrugging. The same shrug as when you made me post his letters back to him marked “Gone Away”.’

  ‘Dear God, Eileen Reilly, are you by any chance running a marriage bureau these days?’

  ‘Go away and think, woman, and don’t disturb me unless you have something to tell me. I’m packing. Annie, Gavin and I are going to see Calli’s family in Canada,’ Eileen laughed.

  ‘What? Tell me more!’

  ‘His brother turned up, saw Annie and Gavin and thought he was seeing his mother and Calli. I was going to explain anyway, but I didn’t need to, he worked it out as soon as he set eyes on them. We’re going to Nova Scotia to give his mother what he calls “A couple of surprises” .’

  ‘Oh, Eileen, that’s just so wonderful!’ Daisy said, then cried down the phone as Eileen cried back to her. ‘I’m a sucker for a happy ending these days!’

  ‘Would you listen to yourself? And not a hint of irony, either! Now go and think, Daisy. Don’t mess up again. We’re not getting any younger, you know!’

  Daisy couldn’t do it, though. She didn’t even know what it was she was supposed to do. It wasn’t a fear of leaving the house. The house would always be there and David and Mette would be staying for a while at least, while they both did post-graduate degrees. The musical charity she had set up in honour of her, sister was running itself without her, so it wasn’t that she was desperately needed. The problem was how to go about something that was possibly a figment of her – and other people’s – imagination. The whole thing wa
s silly. She was being pushed into something she didn’t want to do at a time when she was still vulnerable after Peter.

  Seeking support, she called Pearl, who proceeded to tear her off a strip for being timid and lacking backbone.

  ‘When I think of how you bullied us, Daisy Sheridan, and now you’re behaving like some shy virgin, it just makes my blood boil!’

  ‘I didn’t bully you!’ Daisy protested.

  ‘Yes you did!’ Pearl almost shouted. ‘I was so scared of you I didn’t tell you I’d made a date with one of the Lanc’s new gunners.’

  ‘I was protecting you, trying to save you from being hurt!’

  ‘Well I’m returning the compliment, Daisy,’ Pearl said sternly. ‘Have some bloody guts, woman, take a chance. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  ‘He can tell me to get lost,’ Daisy said quietly.

  ‘So? You’re lost already, you silly woman! Spend a little of the large amount of cash that you’ve got, and buy a plane ticket. Now!’

  Attacked from all sides Daisy began to feel that the rest of the world had it in for her. It seemed that she’d gone from a happy, sedate family life to complete turmoil, and everyone was telling her off and informing her that she was wasting her life. And furthermore, they were doing so in very angry tones she didn’t think she deserved.

  Then she woke up one morning and everything seemed clear for the first time in years. She’d often dreamed of being on a road with many turnings, and the more she looked, the less sure she felt about which one to take. That night she’d had it again, and the road she took led to a hot place, where Isaac, Frank’s shopkeeper cousin, was waiting to hand her two ice-cold bottles of juice. He was smiling and pointing further down the road, so she took the juice, thanked him and walked down the road she obviously knew she had to take, and furthermore she was happy.

  There was one thing left to do before she could go, though: she had to talk to Peter.

  She had made many visits to his grave. At one time she had thought talking to him, bringing him up to date with family news, would make her feel better, a device to get her over the raw time after his death, but it hadn’t worked like that and each time she got up to go she felt more bereft, more alone. This time, she knew, would be different, this time she really would be leaving without him. It was early May, the time of his precious snowdrops was over and there were daffodils everywhere. At this time of year he would have been looking out for Professor Quibbe’s entries in the next local flower show, she thought with a smile, not a plant in the area would have been safe, and she wondered what he would have done with the red roses she had brought to lay on his grave.