by Marie Joseph
Daisy was truly her mother’s daughter when it came to enjoying the company of children. With them she became a child herself, caring not a jot for losing her so-called dignity, the maternal streak in her obvious for anyone to see. Glamour she might dream of, passion she might crave, but at heart she was an earth mother who should, as Martha had realized on the very day she died, have been married to a good kind man who would have given her the babies she needed to fulfil her life.
‘My little love. …’ Daisy’s arm tightened round the sleeping child. ‘My own little love,’ she whispered, believing for the moment that it was true.
*
She awoke from long habit at just before five, turned over on her back as Jimmy stirred beside her.
‘Go back to sleep, love,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t need to get up for a long time yet.’
But Jimmy was in the mood for conversation. Making the child’s swift transition from sleep to wakefulness, he flopped over on to his back to lie with his snub nose pointing to the ceiling, snug and cosy, loth to have her leave him.
‘My dad told me you can balance a glass full of water on the radiator of Mr Evison’s car, and it doesn’t spill even when he’s driving it fast,’ he said as a hopeful opening gambit. ‘My dad was in the desert in the war.’
‘He never told me that,’ Daisy marvelled. ‘Your father wasn’t even in the war.’
‘My dad said some officers fighting in the desert raced some rotten Germans and caught them. ’Cos our side was driving a Rolls-Royce and not a rotten old car like the Germans.’ The hoarse little voice deepened with enjoyable relish. ‘A Rolls-Royce car goes faster than anything – faster than an aeroplane. My dad said they caught that rotten old German car and blew it up. Into little pieces. And the rotten old Germans as well, I bet. My dad says he’s going to buy a car like that when he’s rich. Are you rich, Daisy?’
‘Not rich, no, but not poor, either. Somewhere in between. Why?’
‘Have you got any jewels?’
‘Not real jewels. You’ve seen my coral necklace. That’s real. That came from the bottom of the sea.’
‘The Queen’s got a lot of jewels.’
‘Yes, I suppose she has.’
‘My mum’s got two rings.’
Daisy got out of bed. ‘Go back to sleep now. I’m going to take my clothes down to the bathroom and get dressed in there. Okay? Okay, Jimmy?’
‘My mum’s gone on her holidays.’ Did the hoarse voice waver a little? ‘I bet she comes back soon.’
Daisy sat down again on the side of the bed. ‘I’ve got a surprise to tell you. I was keeping it secret, but I’ll tell you now. In two weeks’ time your dad is coming to see us. In just less than fourteen days he’ll be here.’
‘Will he bring me lots of presents? D’you think he might bring me a bike? A boy in my class has a watch that goes. His dad got it from Woolworth’s and it broke so he took it back and they gave him another one that went. Then he broke that one, so this boy’s dad. …’
‘Try to sleep. You’ll be fit for nothing if you don’t try.’ Daisy tiptoed to the door. ‘I’ll give you a penny to take to school.’ She made her escape.
Leaving Jimmy lying with hands folded on his chest pleasurably anticipating the differing ways he could spend the penny to its fullest advantage. Four giant gob-stoppers that changed colour as you sucked, two long liquorice pipes, a bar of chocolate, or maybe best of all two bags of sherbet to suck up through a Spanish straw. His brow furrowed into genuine anxiety. What about sixteen aniseed balls?
He snuggled down into the warm hollow left by Daisy’s body and closed his eyes, as his legs and arms grew heavy with sleep. What about jelly babies? He could bite all their heads off, and save the black ones till the last.
One floor down Daisy bolted the bathroom door behind her and leaned against the new white porcelain wash basin. That dear little lad. That poor little love, fretting for his mother and father up there alone in the middle of her bed. How little we know of what goes on in the mind of a child. Sighing, she pulled her nightdress over her head and ran the water for a good wash-down.
Or there were always coconut mushrooms, Jimmy fretted on the very edge of sleep. But then they were dearer and you didn’t get as many. … Or dolly mixtures, but he was getting to be a bit old for those. …
Chapter Four
SAM WASN’T ABSOLUTELY sure whether the woman he had seen out of the corner of his eye as he opened the door of the Rolls for Mr Evison was Daisy’s peculiar friend or not. By the time he had reversed the car into the main street she had vanished into thin air.
If it was her, what was she doing in the town, for heaven’s sake? He tried to remember what Daisy had told him about Florence, but it didn’t amount to much. Apparently she had a father living not all that far from the pie shop, an unsavoury character from all accounts. A nut-case probably. Sam was sure the lanky Florence wasn’t quite right in the head. He frowned, tapping his strong white teeth with a pencil. So, in that case, she could have been visiting her old man. It was feasible, he supposed.
To cover himself he wrote a letter to Daisy, telling her what was more or less the truth, goddammit. He had intended to work at his books all the weekend, just as he had said, but urgent business had come up for Mr Evison and they’d made a brief visit up north with no time to contact her. It had been heart-breaking knowing how near he was to Blackpool, but there was nothing he could do about it. He knew she would understand.
That should simplify things, whether the fleeting vision of the tall woman in the voluminous swagger coat had been Florence or not. There was no point in upsetting the apple-cart. Jimmy was better off where he was at the moment, time enough to fetch him back when things were right. If ever they were going to be. He had to treat Aileen like a piece of delicate china at the moment. One false move and they were back where they started.
He saw me after all, Florence thought, when Daisy showed her Sam’s letter. He’d had no intention of saying he was up here if he could have got away with it. The conniving rotter. She wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, that dago with the teeth and dimples. She was going to say something nasty till she saw Daisy’s trusting face.
‘None so blind. …’ she muttered as she turned away. If Shakespeare hadn’t said that, he should have. It was just the kind of thing the Bard in his infinite wisdom would say. She would ask Joshua to look it up for her that evening. Dear Joshua; very dear Joshua. He had looked so weary these past few days, going up to his room after the meal to listen to his wireless and play his records. Teaching backward children must be so wearing. He had even snapped at Daisy when she tried to press a second helping of ginger steamed pudding on him. Not like Bobbie Schofield who must have hollow legs considering the amount of food he put away. How he managed to dance the light fandango every night stuffed like a Christmas turkey she couldn’t imagine.
‘What about,’ Bobbie said one evening, polishing off a second helping of spotted dick pudding bristling with currants and shiny with custard, ‘what about you two gorgeous creatures coming dancing with me?’
Daisy, coming in with the tea – both men preferred tea to coffee to round off their meal – almost dropped the tray.
‘We can’t dance,’ she said at once, answering for both of them. ‘There was never the chance, was there, Florence?’
‘I can.’ Florence stopped clearing the two tables. ‘I used to go to that little place almost opposite the park on my night off, with Mona Hargreaves out of Ribble Street. Don’t you remember, Daisy?’
‘So you did.’ Daisy tried to imagine Florence dancing, and failed. ‘You go with Bobbie. There won’t be the time when the visitors arrive next week.’ She caught Joshua’s eye and wondered if she was imagining the wink. ‘I think it’s a marvellous idea.’
‘You must come too, Joshua.’ Florence looked flushed and excited. ‘The break would do you good. All work and no play, you know.’ To Daisy’s astonishment she wagged a teasing finge
r, smiling coquettishly. ‘Oh, let’s be devils. Just for once.’
Asking permission first, Joshua began the laborious process of lighting his pipe. ‘Daisy’s the one who needs a break. I’ll stay with Jimmy.’
‘Mrs Mac!’ Clasping her hands together, Florence made for the door. ‘She’s always offering to come in and see to Jimmy. I’ll go and ask her. Oh, what fun! What a lark!’
Daisy stared after the amazing sight of Florence skipping from the room like an Angela Brazil fourth-former, all girlish enthusiasm. Florence was never girlish, for heaven’s sake. Florence had been born as sensible as a cross-over pinny. What was wrong with her?
‘Do you want to go, Joshua?’ Daisy passed him the big glass sugar-bowl. ‘I mean Florence does seem to be taking it for granted.’
Joshua gave her an extraordinary look – a frivolous look. As if he were drunk, Daisy thought. ‘Why not? Let’s all be devils,’ he said, thanked her for the meal and left the room.
‘That’s it then.’ Bobbie glided after him on the balls of his small feet, swaying from the hips. Like Rudolph Valentino about to ooze into a tango, Daisy decided. What was wrong with them all? Had they gone mad or something?
She began to clatter cups and saucers together on the tray.
The ballroom reminded Daisy of a Hollywood scene in a film set in a baronial palace in Vienna. When they first went in she stood transfixed, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes.
Tier upon tier of cream and gold curves rose to the lavish frescoes of the vast ceiling, with the dazzling chandeliers suspended in glittering beauty. Because this was a special evening at the very beginning of the season the band was on stage, grouped round the enormous organ, saxophones wailing, clarinets droning. In front of the band a tiny bald man with a small tenor voice was crooning, ‘You’re lovely to look at …’, with his eyes closed and his shoulders hunched as if he was trying to force the words up from a sore throat.
‘I bet his mother’s proud of him just the same,’ Daisy whispered to Joshua, catching his eye.
‘Those colours suit you,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘What kind of stuff is your frock made of?’
‘Macclesfield silk.’ Daisy stared down at the panelled skirt of the dress she had made from a pattern in her mother’s Woman’s Weekly magazine. ‘Now this is the colour I wanted for the lounge curtains!’ She pointed to one of the peach-shaded stripes. ‘I should have worn this when I went for the material.’
‘Yes,’ Joshua said, patting the pocket of his jacket as if searching for his pipe.
‘Shall we dance, Florence?’ Bobbie, svelte of waistline, spotted tie carefully matching spotted handkerchief, swept her on to the floor.
‘Crowded in here, isn’t it?’ Joshua gloomed at the dancers trotting, side-stepping and twirling in foxtrot rhythm, swinging and turning at the corners, the more ambitious executing intricate twiddles when they found a space big enough. ‘And this is nothing to what it will be when the season starts. They say you can end up dancing with a complete stranger unless you’re zipped fast to your partner.’
‘I take it you don’t like dancing?’
‘I’ve been told that dancing with me is no more than walking backwards to music.’ Joshua leaned back against a pillar and folded his arms.
‘I’ve never danced,’ Daisy confided. ‘Only with the yard brush when no one was looking.’
‘You wish you hadn’t come, don’t you?’ Joshua gave her a peculiar thin-lipped smile. ‘I’ll take you back if you want to go.’
‘No. I find it fascinating.’ Daisy pointed to a crowd of girls at the end of the ballroom, opposite to the stage. ‘A whole bed of wallflowers.’ Her eyes glinted with mischief. ‘Why don’t you go and ask one of them to dance with you?’ She narrowed her eyes, trying to get into clearer focus the sea of rouged faces, tightly-curled hair, and the flashes of cheap jewellery on the girls’ flowered dresses. Glamour, she thought wryly. Partnerless they might be, but at least they’ve got glamour. She smothered a yawn as Joshua ignored her question with the contempt she had to admit it deserved. There was one thing to be said in favour of going out dancing, she told herself. It was going to make stopping in every night in the near future seem like one big laugh!
The whole of the floor seemed to be revolving in front of her as more and more couples began to dance. Girls danced with girls, elderly women with husbands as straight and erect as in the days of their soldiering. A child, kept from her bed far too late, jumped and skipped along on the perimeter of the floor, holding fast to her mother’s hands. Joshua’s head sank lower on to his chest.
All at once, through a gap in the whirlpool of motion, Daisy saw Florence gliding by, holding the regulation dancing-class three inches away from Bobbie Schofield’s chest. Her head thrown back and her eyes closed, she surrendered herself with total abandon to the rhythm of the slow-slow, quick-quick-slow tempo. Florence was dancing, as she did everything else, with thoroughness and intensity, her long feet in their sensible shoes slithering along in perfect unison with her partner’s black patent pumps. Her fawn shantung dress was cut cleverly but mistakenly on the cross, and outlined her angular figure in an unflattering way. As she passed by she opened her eyes for a moment, the large lids lifting to emit a pale blue gleam.
‘Your turn next, Joshua,’ she mouthed. ‘Don’t run away!’
Daisy blinked, then as if she’d imagined it, Florence closed her eyes again and executed a perfect cornering. Daisy blinked again and almost wished she’d worn her glasses. Had Florence been drinking? What on earth was the matter with everybody? She looked at Joshua, squarely moribund by her side, and through another gap in the dancers saw Florence, wakened now from her trance, trilling the words of the song into Bobbie’s oiled and sleeked-back hair.
‘Shall we dance, Daisy?’
Square and broad-shouldered Joshua stood before her, fastening the middle button of his dark brown jacket. Handsome, she saw with a start of surprise. A fish out of water, and bad-tempered because of it, but definitely handsome with his brown eyes regarding her sombrely. She slid into the circle of his arms.
‘I can’t do …’ she began, but he tightened his hold on her, moving slowly to the music which had changed now to a slow foxtrot, guiding her into the solid mass of dancers in the middle of the floor.
This wasn’t dancing. This was merely leaning on each other to music, Daisy thought, bemused and unaccountably flustered by his nearness. For the first time she was acutely conscious of his strength and her own fragility. She was sure she could feel the hard beating of his heart; the hand holding hers pulled it up against his shoulder so that they swayed as if welded together.
‘Do you come here often?’ she teased.
‘Don’t talk!’ Joshua jerked her even closer.
Daisy closed her eyes, the intimate contact of his body alarming her so that she lost step. She felt his cheek against her hair. On the band platform a girl vocalist crooned a Jerome Kern melody into the microphone, her voice a throaty replica of Alice Faye’s. A sudden fancy took hold of Daisy. …
It wasn’t Joshua she was dancing with. It was Sam. He had driven up from London to see her, and they were dancing alone on an empty floor as mysterious as a lake bathed in moonlight. The couples swirling round them had vanished into thin air, just like they did in a film, leaving Daisy and Sam to their enchantment. Her striped Macclesfield silk dress, with its inverted pleat at the back and its Peter Pan collar, had changed into a floating gown of white shimmering organza which billowed out as they danced; round and round they went, merged as one into an intoxicating dream, with a sobbing saxophone playing from a deeply shadowed background.
Joshua held her close against his heart. She was small and light. She was the woman he had never thought to find again. She was sweet and warm and funny; she worked so hard her exhaustion at times almost broke his heart. She was loyal, tender, vulnerable, filled with an optimism he felt at times to be misplaced.
And she was think
ing at this very moment of another man.
With a suddenness that startled both of them, the band stopped playing. The dancers clapped, and section by section the lights came up again.
Florence bounded over to them, linking her arm in Joshua’s as they walked off the floor; her face was a bold brick-red and her hair was wisping down from its pleat. She was so highly charged with excitement Daisy wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see blue sparks shooting out of the top of her head. She seemed not to notice that both Joshua and Daisy wore the bemused expressions of sleep-walkers wakened cruelly from their respective trances.
‘The next dance is mine,’ Florence enthused, giving Joshua’s arm a little squeeze. ‘Oh, I do hope it’s a waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three.’ Her hands dangled floppily from her bony wrists as she waved them about. ‘One-two-three, one-two-three. Oh, I love the waltz, don’t you? So graceful, so romantic. …’
‘Unless they’ve changed the programme, the next dance will be the Military Two-Step.’ Bobbie fingered the pencil-slim line of his moustache. ‘There’s a friend of mine who always expects me to dance this one with her. Will you excuse me, please?’
Eyes shining, teeth flashing, he greased his way across the floor to approach a thin girl wearing a dress the colour of a cow-clap, with black bands round the hem.
‘She must be very rich,’ Daisy whispered to Florence. ‘A dress that colour must have cost a fortune.’