by Marie Joseph
Florence wasn’t listening. She was tapping her feet in time to the trumpets sounding the opening bars. Pawing the ground, Daisy thought unkindly. Dragging an obviously unwilling Joshua on to the floor and stampeding him into the dance.
A long sallow young man, who looked as if something nasty could have happened to him in the woodshed in his youth, smiled furtively at Daisy and asked her if she would care to? He jerked a narrow head towards the dance floor, pulsating with the pounding of feet. It made no difference, he said, that she had never danced the Military Two-Step in her life before. He just walked round the edge anyway.
And wasn’t that the story of his life anyroad up, him having been out of work for three years, with barely the strength to blow the skin off his mother’s rice pudding, never mind hurl his partner round a dance floor like an Apache gone clean out of his mind. The world was a terrible place, what with the Depression and the way things were going in Germany, he opined as they trundled dolefully round the perimeter of the floor. Still, if the war came, it would give the out-of-work something to do, not that he would be affected with his bad health, but being a Christian Scientist he was used to smiling through his pain. Shoes were his worst problem, he said, stopping walking for long enough to lift a foot and display a sole hanging loose like the tongue of a panting dog. You could get shoes for twopence a pair at church jumble sales and if they didn’t quite fit, the agony wore off in a couple of weeks. Oh yes, he granted Daisy, he didn’t look all that poor, but if she saw him in the daylight she’d see that his suit shone like polished glass. How had he got in? Oh, he never paid. The woman in the cash desk knew his sad background and always waved him through. Anyway, as soon as the season started he would be in great demand as a partner for the hordes of mill girls who descended on Blackpool, hoping to click with a presentable young man.
‘You?’ Daisy asked, hoping the surprise showed in her voice.
But he wasn’t listening. A captive audience was all he needed apparently for the continuing monologue. I might as well be a plank of wood he’s trundling round with him, Daisy thought, as Florence and Joshua pranced by, Florence tossing her head with each thump of her feet and Joshua, polite and aloof, holding their joined hands high for the twirly bit so that Florence didn’t have to bend her head too much.
On the next circuit Daisy sent him an S O S with her eyes, a frantic signal to be rescued, which, to the obvious annoyance of Florence, he obeyed with alacrity.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to Daisy’s partner, tapping him on the shoulder. ‘Time to catch our tram, dear,’ he said to Daisy. ‘The twins will be waking for their bottles.’
‘And my shift at the factory starts at eleven,’ Daisy said. ‘Yes, you’re right. We must go now, dear.’
Devoid of all expression, Daisy’s partner held out his arms to Florence. ‘Care to?’ he asked hopefully.
But Florence was stalking from the floor in the highest of dudgeons. ‘You’re ready to go home, so we all go home,’ she told Daisy, as Joshua wove his way through the Military Two-Steppers to tell Bobbie what was happening. ‘You can be very selfish, you know. I was really enjoying myself.’ She looked upset.
‘You stay on with Florence,’ Daisy suggested when Joshua came back to them. ‘I’ll go and relieve Mrs Mac. It’s not fair to keep her up too late, anyway.’
‘Let Florence stay with Bobbie,’ Joshua said too quickly, taking Daisy’s arm. ‘I’ve got some marking to do.’
Florence shot Daisy a filthy look. ‘We’ll leave Bobbie to enjoy himself. He doesn’t need us. I’m ready to go, anyway. Dancing the night away is all right for some, if that’s what they want, I suppose.’
Daisy’s eyes widened in surprise. But why should she feel surprise? The whole evening had had more than a touch of Alice in Wonderland unreality. The last thing she noticed as they left the ballroom was her former partner steering a girl backwards round the dance floor, a girl dressed in green, so tall, thin and flat she would have won first prize as a runner-bean at a fancy-dress ball.
Outside the air was fresh and clean, gusting breezily from the sea. Belisha beacons glowed like oranges against the night sky.
‘Now this is more like it,’ Joshua said, striding out. ‘Dancing is all right for some. As you so rightly said, Florence.’
‘Great minds think alike, Joshua.’ Florence smiled at him, restored at once to good humour. For a reason Daisy wasn’t prepared even to try to fathom.
Daisy was still wide awake when Bobbie Schofield let himself quietly into the house at well past midnight. The hours he kept had long since ceased to intrigue her. It was none of her business, anyway. He was neat and undemanding and kept his room as tidy as a ship’s captain’s cabin, which incidentally reminded her of a ship’s cabin because of the tin trunk covered with a Spanish shawl in the window recess. Once, out of curiosity, dusting round the lid, she had tried to open it only to find that it was securely padlocked.
‘Hope there isn’t a head in it,’ she’d told Florence, who in one of her now frequent humourless moods had explained that there would have been a distinct smell if there were.
Daisy sighed and turned her pillow over, thumping it into a more acceptable shape, but not too enthusiastically in case she woke Jimmy, snoring gently from his little camp bed.
She folded her arms across her chest and stared up into the darkness. Something was worrying her and she knew she would go on worrying until she realized what it could be. Was it her decision to try to manage without outside help till they saw how things went? Was the prospect of having to work like a galley slave once the visitors arrived sending Florence slightly potty? Martha had always said that Florence was unstable, like her mother before her. Could she have been right? Florence was eccentric, that was all. Artistic clever people were often eccentric. Look at Virginia Woolfe. And she didn’t have the frustration of having to work as a domestic in a Blackpool boarding-house.
The worrying was well established by now. Would they be able to manage, just the two of them? Daisy’s feverish mind ran through what would be a typical day’s routine.
Full cooked breakfast for at least twelve people. Beds made or changed, wash basins cleaned, floors swept, lounge tidied and the fire lit, unless there was an unlikely heatwave, the dining room cleared after breakfast and check tablecloths changed for white damask. All that after they had cleared the breakfast things and washed up. Plus the daily shopping for fresh meat or fish and the preparation of the vegetables before the cooking of the wholesome meal she was determined to provide at the end of the day.
She glanced across at the outline of Jimmy’s dark head on his pillow. Could two people, however hard they were willing to work, achieve all that? And what time was there going to be to spare for a child? Daisy sighed and closed her eyes, seeing Jimmy creeping in from school, snatching a bite to eat at the kitchen table, trying to talk to her and being ignored because she was busy basting the day’s joint or rolling pastry for fruit pies. Being forbidden the lounge because it was for the visitors, missing his bedtime story because there just wasn’t the time.
She would have to discuss all that with Sam when he came. And where was Sam going to sleep? All the rooms were booked for Easter, and Mrs Mac had warned her that folks turned up on the doorstep, and she daren’t turn paying guests away if she could possibly squeeze them in. Florence had had enough to say about Auntie Edna and Uncle Arnold coming for nothing at such a busy time. Florence had seen the books and knew what a narrow line divided them from sinking or swimming. Everything had cost so much more than Daisy had budgeted for. Getting things on tick wasn’t Daisy’s style at all, and to be in the red at the bank was unthinkable.
‘Never spend a penny unless you can cover it with another,’ Martha had always said.
‘I owe no man a farthing,’ her father had boasted.
He would have thoroughly approved of Hills’ recent policy. The big department store had given up their hire-purchasing trading because of the recurrent financial instab
ility of the town’s landladies.
‘If you can’t afford a thing, then do ’bout it,’ her father would have said. He had never been what you could call a deeply religious man, but all at once Daisy remembered a prayer he had taught her, saying he said it himself when things got too much for him:
‘Dear God, I am sailing the wide wide sea. Please guide my little ship for me.’
Desperate for a sleep that would not come, Daisy clasped her hands together and began to pray.
‘Dear God, I am sailing. …’
As she repeated the comforting words her breathing grew deeper, her whole body relaxed, her forehead puckered into a frown, as she slid at last into an unconsciousness as profound as a coma.
Chapter Five
‘WHAT’S YON LITTLE lad doing here?’
Edna, freshly permed for her holiday, the tight helmet of grey corrugated waves imprisoned in an invisible net, jerked her pointed chin at Jimmy as he ran past her in the hall en route for the kitchen and the biscuit tin.
‘Eh up, our Daisy. I know who he is. He’s the little lad belonging to yon London chap, isn’t he?’ Edna’s monkey face expressed amazement, then sorrow. ‘Nay, don’t tell me you’re still carrying on with him? He’s not here as well, is he?’
‘Come in here, Auntie.’ Daisy opened the lounge door. ‘There’s something I want to say to you.’
Chunnering, Edna followed Daisy into the newly furbished room with its flame-coloured curtains and peach-shaded walls, its mock-leather chairs and sofa, and the large square carpet blooming with yellow roses. Refusing to sit down, she stood straight as a ruler, the room’s shining splendour wasted on her.
‘Now then, Edna.’ Arnold in his tweed flat cap, hovered uncomfortably in the doorway, holding their bulging suitcase strapped with stout string.
As ever, Edna ignored him. ‘Well, our Daisy?’
Daisy spoke brightly to hide the despised blush creeping up from her throat. ‘Sam is arriving tomorrow. He was coming for the Easter weekend but he has to work, so he’ll only be here for the one night, that’s all.’ She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice and failed miserably. ‘He’s not his own boss, you know.’
‘You’ve not told me what his lad’s doing here.’ Edna sat down on the nearest chair to take the weight off her feet which always swelled when she’d been travelling. ‘From the way that child came busting in it seemed to me as if he’s been living here. Has he been stopping with you?’
‘Now then, Edna.’ Small and cowed, but not quite beaten into submission, Arnold smiled at Daisy, his pale eyes almost watering with kindness plus shame at his wife’s behaviour. ‘What Daisy does is none of our business. She’s a grown woman now.’ He nodded round the room. ‘Nay, but this is a gradely room, lass. A real bit of class. I bet there’s not a room in the Savoy Hotel to compare with this.’
‘Has he got divorced?’ Edna refused to be side-tracked. ‘Because if he hasn’t it’s about time somebody with your best interests at heart put the kybosh on things.’ Edna went into a little rocking motion to give herself the impetus to rise from the low chair. ‘I’ve kept saying I had a feeling something was going on. I reckon we’ve come none too soon. What you need is someone to talk straight to you, Daisy. Our Betty, bless her, hasn’t a mean bone in her body, she’s never had a dirty mind, but even she thought there was something fishy going on, reading between the lines of your last letter.’
‘There’s nothing fishy going on!’ Daisy appealed to her uncle, but he was tracing the outline of a cabbage rose on the carpet with the toecap of a brown boot. ‘Sam asked me to look after his son for a while and I said I would. It’s as simple as that.’
‘Has his wife died? Done away with herself on account of his philandering?’ Edna’s nose looked hard and sharp. ‘What about the little lass? Have you got her here an’ all?’
‘No!’ Daisy tried not to sound exasperated. ‘She’s with her mother. Look, I know it all sounds complicated, but it is my own business, Auntie Edna. I’ve gone twenty-one, and I know what I’m doing.’ She walked towards the door. ‘Now, if you’ll come with me I’ll show you to your room.’
She turned to face them, one hand on the door knob. ‘I’ve given you my best room, right opposite the bathroom.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I want you to enjoy yourselves. I want you both to have the best time you’ve had in the whole of your lives. There wasn’t much I could do to repay you both for all you did when me mother died, but I want this next week to be one you’ll remember for a long time to come.’
She started for the foot of the stairs. ‘You’re my very first boarders, apart from the regulars on the top floor. See, Florence has ruled lines in this visitors’ book here. I want you to sign your names, then before you go back home I’d like you to put something in this “comments” column. Something complimentary, I hope.’
‘A home from home,’ Arnold said, trying to keep the peace.
Edna said nothing.
‘She thinks she’s fobbed us off by telling us next to nowt.’
In their bedroom Edna busied herself opening and closing drawers and testing the mattress for bounce.
‘Why isn’t that little lad with his own mother? I’ve never heard nothing as daft in me whole life. What does our Daisy know about fetching little lads up? Is that chap going to marry her, or isn’t he? She went nearly purple when I mentioned the word divorce. She’ll shame us all yet, you mark my words.’ Pulling back the green candlewick spread Edna fingered the top sheet. ‘Bleached twill, but then I don’t expect she could afford better. She’s been spending money on this place like it grows on trees. I’ll have a word with that foreign chap when he comes. With our Martha gone to her rest I’m the only one that can.’
‘He’s not a foreigner.’ Arnold was patiently picking at a knot in the thick string holding the battered suitcase together. ‘He’s not from abroad.’
‘London is abroad to folks like us.’ Edna bent down to look under the bed for the chamber. ‘They’ve got different morals down there. It’s all taxis and nightclubs and drinking cocktails like water. They’re a different breed from us.’
She ran a finger across the narrow mantelshelf to check for dust. ‘Anyroad, what sort of a man would let his child be fetched up by a single woman, with his own wife still alive? I’ll get to the bottom of this. You know what our Daisy’s like. Easy meat for any man just out for one thing. Our Martha never gave her no freedom; she’d have stopped the wind blowing on her if she could have. Going to the pictures three times a week wasn’t right. Daisy was bound to get wrong ideas the way they carry on in pictures.’
She walked to the door and clicked it shut. ‘And another thing. Those two regulars Daisy mentioned are men! I bet you never cottoned on to that. There’s been two men under the same roof as two single women. You know what they say about frustrated spinsters. Give them the opportunity and over the windmill go their caps. It’ll be fur coats and no knickers next.’
Arnold rolled the string into a ball ready for using again. Seen in profile his wife’s face had a squashed Minnie Mouse look to it.
‘I’d leave well alone, lass,’ he said, without much hope.
When Sam arrived the next day Edna and Arnold were in Woolworth’s searching for take-home presents with a seaside slant to them for Betty, Cyril and the baby.
‘Best to get this job out of the way early on, there’s nothing worse than worrying all week what you’re going to take back.’ Edna stood by a counter, trying to decide between a set of false teeth fashioned in bright pink rock – Cyril liked a joke – or a humbug the size of a large pincushion.
Arnold said nothing.
‘I’m sorry it’s worked out this way, Daisybell.’
Sam stood in the hall of Shangri-La wearing a new raincoat with the collar turned up round his chin. He looked so handsome Daisy felt weak at the knees.
‘The Evisons have decided to dump the kids on a relative for Easter and go off to Cornwall, so naturally they want me t
o drive them there.’
‘I understand,’ Daisy said, wondering for a brief disloyal moment if this was the way it was always going to be. Sam apologizing and her understanding. She ached for him to put his arms around her, but Florence was in the kitchen with the door half open, and Jimmy was coming slowly down the stairs, to eye his father with grave and unchildlike suspicion.
‘Have you brought me a present, Dad?’
When Sam bent down to kiss him he turned his head away.
‘Big boys don’t kiss, do they?’ Florence came into the hall. She looked bad-tempered. ‘Hello, Sam. Did you have a good trip up here the other week?’ She gave a small sarcastic laugh. ‘A pity we didn’t get the chance to have a word.’
Sam composed his face into an expression of baffled bewilderment. ‘How do you mean, Florence? Were you there?’ He turned to Daisy for the explanation which came at once.
‘Florence saw you driving Mr Evison past the shop. She was on her way to the station after seeing her father.’
‘Ah. …’ Sam visibly relaxed. So that was it. He’d boxed clever after all. By his own admission in the letter to Daisy that he’d been in Blackburn, he was in the clear. His sigh of relief was almost audible. ‘I wish I’d seen you, Florence,’ he said with deep insincerity. ‘It would have been nice to have some first-hand news of Daisy and this little chap, but when I’m driving I concentrate on the road.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘How is your father? I hope you found him in good health.’
‘Very well, thank you. Excuse me.’ Florence turned on her heel and marched straight-backed into the kitchen.
The flarchy rotter. Of course he’d seen her. It was there on his handsome face, as plain as a pikestaff for anybody not totally blinkered to see. He’d likely been up north for a couple of days, avoiding making the short journey to Blackpool for reasons best known to himself. Devious, that was Mr Samuel Barnet. Underhand, deceitful, and slimy as a toad, playing some game best suited to himself. He was as unrufflable as a slab of concrete; he was an unmitigated swine. The sort of fella who would make the suave George Sanders look like Little Boy Blue.