Avalanche of Daisies

by Beryl Kingston

  The buzzbombs had been falling on London for over six weeks and although most Londoners made light of it, being on perpetual alert was beginning to wear them down. The papers called it ‘war weariness’ and prescribed Sanatogen and Horlicks to counteract it. Betty and Barbara preferred a weekly trip to the cinema.

  Over the last few difficult weeks their friendship had progressed so quickly that they were now two best friends. It hadn’t taken them any time at all to discover that, as well as their affection for Steve, their occasional annoyance at their siblings, a capacity for hard work and a stoical acceptance of their present danger, they also shared the same taste in many of the lesser things in their lives, films and food – or the lack of it – make-up and hairstyles, radio shows, popular songs, even newspapers. Betty was brandishing a copy of the Evening News at that very moment as she rushed into Barbara’s bedroom, brown eyes gleaming with excitement.

  ‘You seen this about Hitler?’ she said. ‘Someone’s tried to do him in.’

  Barbara had been combing her hair, standing on tiptoe so that she could see her face in Steve’s high mirror. Now she paused and turned to face her cousin. ‘Is he dead?’ she hoped. Oh let him be dead and then the war’ll be over and Steve can come home.

  Betty pulled a face. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Says here “an unsuccessful attempt was made on Hitler’s life.” They threw a bomb at him, apparently, but it killed someone else.’

  ‘Pity!’

  ‘Shows they’re gettin’ sick of him though,’ Betty said. ‘I mean, we don’t go takin’ pot shots at old Winnie.’

  ‘So they should be getting sick of him an’ all,’ Barbara said, returning to the mirror. ‘The dreadful things he’s done, thass onny right an’ proper. Read it out while I finish my hair.’

  She listened attentively while Betty read the paper aloud. ‘Better luck next time,’ she said, when Betty stopped reading. ‘Thass all I got to say. Are the kids coming with us?’

  ‘They’re on their way,’ Betty told her. ‘You know how they dawdle. Had any more letters?’

  ‘Not since Monday’s,’ Barbara said. ‘I showed you that, didn’t I?’ Steve’s letters were always so careful they were actually quite disappointing – apart from that one lovely PS. She kept them in a shoebox, tied with a bit of red ribbon that Betty had nicked from Woolworths for her, and she read them every night before she settled to sleep – or to a night in the shelter – but she couldn’t help wishing they’d been love letters. Still at least as they were she could show them round to the family.

  Betty returned to the paper. ‘I been tryin’ to work out where he is,’ she said. ‘It’s full a’ stuff about that Caen place. I’ll bet he’s there.’

  Barbara didn’t want to think about the fighting. It was too painful. So she changed the subject. ‘What we goin’ to see?’ she asked.

  Betty turned the page to find out and as she ran her finger down the column, the doorbell rang. ‘There’s the little’uns,’ she said and went clattering off downstairs to answer it.

  She was back almost at once to say that there was a young man on the doorstep asking for Barbara.

  Barbara picked up her lipstick – coolly. ‘What sort of young man?’ she said. ‘I don’t know any young men.’

  ‘He’s a looker,’ Betty told her. ‘Dark hair. Talks like you.’

  The only looker Barbara knew was Victor Castlemain and it couldn’t be him because he didn’t know where she was. But if it wasn’t him, who could it be? Mildly curious, she finished off her make-up and went downstairs to find out. And it was Victor, wearing a smart grey suit and a brown Homburg hat and looking distinctly prosperous.

  For a few seconds she stood where she was and looked at him. And he looked at her, his expression guarded. She realised that she was feeling acutely embarrassed. How could she explain who he was? Why had he come? Did he know she was married? And what on earth could she say to him?

  In the end she simply sauced him, falling into the old habit of defence by bravado because she couldn’t think of any other way. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

  Her mocking tone reassured him. ‘So they tell me,’ he joked. ‘Thass onny a rumour, mind.’

  The burr of his accent brought Lynn back into her memory in sudden and nostalgic focus. And that made her sharp with him. ‘How d’you know where I was?’ she said and the question sounded like an accusation.

  ‘Skill!’ he told her happily. ‘I do a bit of sleuthing in my spare time. Followed you home from the depot.’ In fact he’d been hunting for her ever since he took possession of his new car, trailing from depot to depot, asking questions and soft-soaping her friends, and it wasn’t until that afternoon that he’d discovered her address.

  She wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or cross. ‘How did you know I was at the depot?’

  ‘Working on the trams,’ he explained. ‘That’s general knowledge in Lynn. Hain’t you goin’ to introduce us, then?’

  She made the introduction while she thought what to do next. She couldn’t invite him in or Mrs Wilkins would go mad. ‘Victor Castlemain. He’s from Kings Lynn. My husband’s cousin Betty Horner.’ If he was going to be upset – an’ she couldn’t blame him if he was – better get that said quickly.

  But he was smiling at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I heard. Congratulations. Hello Betty.’

  ‘We’re just going out,’ Barbara told him.

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’ he offered. ‘I just got a new car.’ And he stood aside so that they could admire it.

  Barbara gave the car the coolest glance she could manage, determined not to be impressed. And was impressed just the same. It was so big and black and shiny. ‘Actually,’ she said, offering him a get-out, ‘we’re only goin’ up the road. To the pictures.’

  But he didn’t want a get-out. He’d spent weeks looking for her, and now he’d found her, he was going to stay with her as long as he could. He’d made a good start. She was pleased to see him. She hadn’t sent him off with a flea in his ear. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Let me come with you an’ I’ll treat you both. I hain’t been to the pictures for ages.’

  ‘There’s four of us,’ Betty warned, laughing at him. ‘My kid sisters are coming too. That’s them dawdlin’ up the road. See?’

  He accepted them at once and easily. Money was no problem now and it would be a good investment. Show he meant no harm. ‘The more the merrier.’

  Barbara had recovered her balance. He didn’t seem to mind that she was married. He wasn’t hollering or looking cross or even upset. He was just being himself – the way he’d been in the old days. ‘You come into a fortune then?’ she teased. He certainly looked as though he had. That suit must have cost a pretty penny.

  He grinned at that and turned the full charm of his attention to Betty. ‘So what about it, Betty?’

  The little ’uns had arrived at the gate and were looking at him with great interest. ‘Well, why not?’ Betty said. ‘Any friend a’ Barbara’s is a friend of ours.’

  And at that moment Heather came downstairs, buttoning up her coat and with a bundle of magazines tucked under her arm. ‘What you lot doing hanging about in the doorway?’ she rebuked. ‘’Lo Hazel. ’Lo Joycey. I thought you’d be gone by now. You’ll miss the start a’ the big picture if you don’t look sharp.’ Then her face changed as she saw Victor. ‘An’ who’s this?’

  Her hostility was so extreme that it made up Barbara’s mind. ‘This is Victor Castlemain,’ she said. ‘He’s an old schoolfriend of mine. We’re going to the pictures with him. Victor, this is my mother-in-law.’

  ‘Charmed I’m sure,’ Heather said, her voice so acid she could have cut steel with it.

  Victor told her he was delighted to meet her but then he rushed to open the car door. Strike while the iron’s hot, sort of thing. ‘Hop in,’ he urged Betty. ‘Plenty of room at the back. That’s the style! You’ll take the passenger seat, won’t you Spitfire.’

  And as her mother-in-law was g
laring at her, she did, chin in the air and face set. I got a right to my own life, her expression said. You hain’t my keeper.

  So they drove off to the Kinema, and although Barbara made a point of sitting between the little ’uns, she had to admit it was a very good evening. Going with Vic was one in the eye for Mrs Wilkins, the film took their minds off the buzzbombs and he was really good company. Hazel and Joyce were highly taken with him because he gave them so many sweets. His pockets were stuffed with them. Must have been saving his coupons for months. And it was rather a lark to be driven home in that car of his. Bit like Cinderella. Except when they’d dropped the Horner girls off and she was suddenly on her own with him. That was a bit embarrassing.

  He was as easy as if he’d been taking them all out for months. ‘What you doing Saturday?’ he asked casually as they turned into Childeric Road.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, equally casual. ‘Betty wants me to go out with her.’

  ‘Where to. The flicks?’

  ‘No. Dancing. They got a palais next to the Kinema.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘She goes every Saturday. She been on and on at me to go too.’

  ‘Well then, let me treat you both.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Going to the pictures with him in a crowd was one thing, dancing with him quite another. ‘I hain’t been dancing since I got married.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She answered him honestly. ‘Don’t seem right somehow. Not without Steve.’

  ‘That’s daft,’ he assured her. ‘There’s no harm in dancing, now is there. Everyone go dancing these days. Everyone went dancing in Lynn, didn’t they.’

  She opened the car door, climbed out and stood on the pavement thinking about it, tempted but uncertain. ‘Well I don’t know.’

  Having money in his pocket had given Victor a new and ebullient confidence. He knew she was tempted and he knew what to do about it. He had an ally now. ‘Ask Betty,’ he suggested, slipping the car into gear. ‘See what she says. I shall be there anyhow. Eight o’clock, same as Lynn. I’ll see you around!’ Clark Gable couldn’t have handled it better.

  ‘Good idea,’ Betty said, when Barbara called in at Woolworths the next day to test her opinion. ‘Take you out of yourself. Bit a’ life. Do you good. Can’t see no harm in that.’

  ‘Your aunt will,’ Barbara said. ‘You saw how she went on the other night. An’ that was onny the pictures.’ It made her feel really pleased with herself to remember how much they’d annoyed her.

  ‘What she say when you got in?’ Betty wanted to know.

  ‘Nothin’. She just made a face.’ And she gave a fair imitation of Heather’s disapproving grimace.

  ‘That’s just her way,’ Betty said, patting her mounded hair into place and keeping an eye on two potential customers. ‘You don’ wanna take no notice of her. Steve wouldn’t mind, now would he? An’ he’s the important one. I mean ter say, you’re only young once. He wouldn’t want you to stay cooped up at home all the time.’

  But Steve was the nub of the problem. Barbara couldn’t bear the thought that she might hurt him by what she did. She’d written him a long letter that very morning before she went shopping, telling him all about the buzzbombs in Greenwich and how she’d queued for raspberries for over an hour, because they were so rare and she thought they’d be a treat and how the supply had run out before she got to the door, but she hadn’t said a word about Victor’s reappearance. She’d persuaded herself that there was no point in saying anything because it would only worry him for nothing, but the mere fact that she’d kept quiet about it was significant, explain it how she would. Even so, it would be nice to go dancing. Now that the offer had been made so persuasively she knew how much she’d missed it. It made her feet tap just to think about it.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Betty said, when she’d served her two customers. ‘Why don’t we go an’ meet him in there, sort a’ thing? That way we’re not exactly going with him, are we? We’re just sort a’ going.’

  Put that way it was possible. After all, Betty would be there so that wouldn’t be like a date, and she’d been dancing with him so many times it wasn’t as if it was anything new. So she looked out her red dress, put on her bold face, and she and Betty just sort of went.

  The Palais was a magical place, all gilt and red plush and subdued lighting with blue cigarette smoke wreathing up into the ceiling like incense. It had a sprung floor and a dazzling mirror ball, and up on the stage there was a smart-looking band playing the latest tunes, Glen Miller and everything. There were servicemen everywhere, sailors in their tiddly suits looking glamorous, Yanks doing the jitterbug, a crowd from the RAF base at Kidbrooke, very noticeable in their RAF blue. It was such a crush that they’d been there more than ten minutes before Victor found them. He greeted them so casually that it was obviously not a date. So that was all right.

  And oh what a joy it was to dance again! The Saturday hop at Lynn had been fun but this was the best she’d ever known. There was a frenetic energy about the dancers here. The beat was faster, the smell of sweat and dust, cigarettes and musk more intense, the dancers more abandoned. It was as if they were all grabbing at their last chance of fun before the bombs fell.

  And whatever else you might say about Victor Castlemain, he was a smashing dancer. He took it in turns to dance with both girls and found himself other partners when they were jiving with the Americans. He bought them cloakroom tickets and kept them plied with cigarettes and chewing gum and, all in all, behaved himself admirably. So naturally when he suggested another trip to the cinema on Thursday, ‘All four of you’, they agreed at once.

  Their outings rapidly acquired a pattern. Flicks Thursday, Palais Saturday. And because it was such fun and they needed fun so much, they soon found they were looking forward to their evenings out. It made the tension of the week more bearable and gave them all a chance to be young and irresponsible and almost carefree. Of course they all knew a buzzbomb could fall on a dancehall or a cinema as easily as it could come down anywhere else, but once they were inside they forgot their fears, cocooned in a warm fug of crowded bodies and cigarette smoke, caught up in a glamorous dream.

  The only snag as far as Barbara was concerned was that she still hadn’t told Steve about Vic’s arrival. On that first Sunday morning, she wrote to confess that she’d been dancing with Betty and to hope he wouldn’t mind, but she kept quiet about their other companion. Then as the weeks went by and it grew more and more difficult to find the right way to tell him, her secret solidified. It made her feel guilty but that was silly, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t go on for long, and there was nothing in it, it was only a bit of fun. Anyway, she’d earned it, hadn’t she, the sort of life she was leading these days.

  Heather didn’t share that opinion at all.

  ‘Out every night of the week,’ she complained to Bob. ‘Gallivanting about with that Victor. It’s no way for a wife to behave.’

  ‘Not every night,’ Bob demurred. ‘It’s only Thursdays and Sat’days.’

  ‘An’ dancing with every Tom, Dick an’ Harry, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Bob struggled to be reasonable. ‘You don’t know that Heather.’

  His protest was swept aside. ‘Of course she is. Don’t tell me. You want to see her when she goes out sometimes. She’s made up to the nines. You never saw such warpaint. Well you saw the state of her last Saturday, didn’tcher? Disgraceful, I call it. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing. And our poor Steve out there fighting the Jerries. You’d think she’d have more regard for his feelings, poor boy.’

  ‘She’s young,’ Bob tried.

  That didn’t sway her either. ‘She’s flighty. I tell you what I think. I think someone ought to tell him.’

  Bob’s heart was sinking deeper and deeper into his chest. ‘But not you, eh? You wouldn’t want to upset him, now would you? Not when he’s in France.’

  Heather had to admit that no, she wouldn’t want to upset
him. She was much too fond of him for that and much too worried about him. ‘But somebody ought to say something to that girl,’ she said. ‘An’ if this goes on …’

  But the next Thursday evening, to her surprise and relief, Victor Castlemain didn’t turn up and the four girls went chattering off to the cinema without him.

  ‘There you are you see,’ Bob said, when he came in after his night shift and she told him the news. ‘He was just a flash in the pan. That’s all. You was worrying for nothing.’ It had been a bad night, with more than four buzzbombs in their immediate area, and his face was creased with fatigue.

  ‘There’s your breakfast,’ she said, lovingly. ‘Eat it up quick while it’s hot, or you won’t get the benefit. Then you can get off to bed. You look done in.’

  ‘It’s a long war,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.

  At first, Barbara was rather annoyed to be stood up. ‘Thass Vic all over,’ she complained to Betty. ‘He’s too casual. Always was.’ But even as she spoke she realised that she was quite pleased about it because he’d revealed his clay feet. Steve would never have stood anyone up. It wasn’t in his nature. She remembered how he’d sent his friend Dusty with a note when he was put on jankers. Dear Steve. Wasn’t that just typical of him? If only they’d hurry up and get this war over and done with and let them be together again.

  That Saturday she and Betty went to the dance on their own and enjoyed themselves every bit as much as they would have done if Victor had been with them. They missed his cigarettes and chewing gum but that was about all. And when Thursday came round again and the black car appeared outside the house, they were both cool to him.

  ‘Thought you’d left the country,’ Barbara said, as she opened the front door.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, beaming at them. ‘Something came up. Had to work.’

  Neither of them believed him. ‘At night?’ Betty mocked. ‘I thought you was a salesman.’

  ‘So I am,’ he said. ‘Matter of fact, I brought you some of my goods.’ And he lifted a large cardboard box from the boot of his car and handed it to Barbara, looking smug.