by Marie Joseph
‘You’re a bit of a hypocrite, aren’t you, Miss Bell?’ Aileen ground out her cigarette. ‘Telling me one minute how carried away you were yourself. You don’t think you’re the only woman to make a fool of herself over a man who wasn’t worth it, do you?’ She started to take another cigarette from the packet, then pushed it back into her handbag. ‘I would have laid down and died for David.’
‘David?’
‘The bloke I was supposed to be going to Canada with. I loved him so much it was as though another person lived in my skin. Jimmy was awful to him, and Jimmy can be hard work when he sets himself to be awkward. He got on my nerves so much I was making myself ill. David couldn’t stand him, and to say that Jimmy couldn’t stand David would be the understatement of the year.’ She spread her hands wide. ‘So I took him to his father, they’d always been as thick as thieves anyway, and the next I knew Sam had fostered him out with friends. Two maiden ladies with a lodging-house by the sea, he told me, just for the time being till he finished with his exams and could move out of that grotty room over Mr Evison’s garage.’ She took off her hat and placed it on the settee cushions beside her. ‘Sam was biding his time, that’s all. He suspected that David had no intention of marrying me and starting off with a ready-made family in Canada. It takes one to know one, Miss Bell.’
Daisy said nothing. She was staring at the wide black parting revealed when Aileen Barnet lowered her head. Like a dirty stripe at least an inch wide. It made Sam’s wife more human somehow, vulnerable. More of an ally. More like a friend.
‘Seems we’ve both been a couple of pie-cans,’ she said at last.
‘Pie-cans?’ Aileen raised a bleak face.
‘Lancashire for silly buggers,’ Daisy said deliberately, wanting to shock a smile out of the unhappy woman now lighting yet another cigarette. ‘Stay where you are and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
‘So that’s that,’ Daisy told Joshua later that evening after Winnie had gone to bed. She had spared him what she thought of as the sordid details, telling him that Sam wouldn’t be coming up again, that his wife wasn’t going to divorce him, and that when he found a better job, as she was sure he would, Sam and his wife were going to try and make a go of it.
She was very matter-of-fact as she spoke. Brisk, no nonsense, almost as if it had been a foregone conclusion. ‘You know, I could have liked her, Joshua. Her hair needed touching up, but apart from that she was really quite pretty.’
‘So now what are you going to do?’ There was a singing in Joshua’s head, but he wasn’t going to listen to it, not yet. In spite of Daisy’s flippancy he had known something was wrong the minute he came into the house, and known equally she would tell him about it at the first opportunity. He was her best friend now that Florence was dead; probably she had thought of him as that for a long time before Florence did what she did. He was Daisy’s confidant, her sounding board. Good old Joshua, always there, forever reliable, a friend in need and a friend indeed. What more could he ask?
Suddenly he knew there was a lot more he could ask. His instinct should have warned him it was too soon, the wrong moment, but he was impetuous, eager, a man in love, and he had bided his time for too long.
‘I could give up,’ Daisy was saying, ‘or I could carry on. I could tell myself that losing Sam, Florence dying – I could tell myself it was all too much for me to bear.’ She tucked the wayward strand of hair behind an ear. ‘Or I could put up a fight. I could remind myself that we are like animals, you know, the law of the jungle, kill or be killed. I could, for the time being, till the hurt goes away a little, live one day at a time, not looking to the future too much. The way I think you do, Joshua.’ Her smile almost broke his heart. ‘At least I’ve got your friendship to keep me going. You should be called Peter, really. You know, Peter, the rock.’
The long day had drained the strength from her, but with only that red-haired flighty child to help her he knew she would get up the next morning and carry on. Beds would be made, meals prepared with care, families would come and go, determined to enjoy themselves whether it rained, blew a gale or even snowed. From the lounge a loud burst of laughter reminded Joshua that they were far from alone.
‘You could always marry me,’ he said, timing it wrong, saying it clumsily, smiling when he should have looked serious. In his eagerness there was even the hint of a swagger in his voice.
‘Yes, there’s always that possibility.’ Daisy laughed into his eyes. ‘I might consider it too if it wouldn’t be too much like marrying me dad. Did I ever tell you how much you remind me of my father, Joshua? I think that’s why I’m so fond of you.’
Joshua stepped back swiftly as if she’d hit out at him. ‘Yes, boys have become fathers at fifteen,’ he said stiffly, ‘so I suppose that in a literal context I could be your father.’ He raised a non-existent hat from his head in a mock salute. ‘Goodnight, Daisy. Tomorrow is another day.’
The hurt was deep inside him as he slowly climbed the stairs to his room at the top of the tall house. It festered inside him as he pulled on his dressing-gown and sat in his chair listening to Chopin’s First Prelude on his wireless with the sound turned low. He smoked his pipe till the air felt and smelled thick, but the music that night was of little comfort to his soul.
He woke to the sound of footsteps on the stairs and a frenzied knocking on a door. Out on the landing he bumped into Daisy struggling into a cotton kimono-type dressing-gown. She clutched at Joshua.
‘It’s the man in number four. He says he left the plug in his wash basin and the tap running.’ She was already half-way down the stairs. ‘Oh, no! Look at it! Do something, Joshua! Oh, my new carpets … they’ll be ruined.’
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Miss Bell.’ The commercial traveller in number four slip-slapped his way towards them through the water soaking its way through the pile of the new landing carpet. ‘I was so fast asleep, I didn’t hear a sound.’
‘The overflow must have been blocked.’ His face grim, Joshua paddled out of the bedroom. ‘Where’s the fuse box?’ He patted Daisy’s arm as he sloshed his way to the top of the stairs. ‘Don’t panic now. Just leave it to me. We’ll need candles and torches. I’ll have to turn the electricity off at the master switch.’
‘Candles and torches. … All right, Joshua.’
He could sense Daisy being determined to keep calm, but all the lights went out as they reached the hall together. ‘What the ’ell’s going on?’ By the sound of things, Joshua realized, at least two of the men visitors had emerged from their rooms, ready and willing to help – he hoped. ‘Good girl.’ He took a torch from Daisy’s outstretched hand and moved into the lounge.
‘As I thought,’ he muttered, shining the beam on a damp circular patch on the ceiling, dripping water down the light cord. ‘It’s not too bad in here,’ he reassured Daisy. ‘Bring me the washing-up bowl, love, then you’ll need mops and buckets, and saucers for the candles. Don’t say young Winnie’s managing to sleep through all this?’
‘She’d sleep through the Charge of the Light Brigade once she’s got off.’
‘Then let her be.’ Joshua was half-way upstairs handing out candles to the men from number two and number three. ‘Don’t tell me the bloke responsible for this flood is back in bed?’ He stared round in disbelief.
‘He is, y’know.’ Number two was using one of Daisy’s good towels to mop up with, bending from the waist, sloshing it about in the water, twisting the Christy towel into a rope before squeezing the water into a chamber pot hastily snatched from the cupboard by the side of his bed. ‘I’ve sent the missus back to bed; she’s neither use nor ornament at the best of times, but would you credit that fella doing the same? Does he expect us to mop round him while he lies there like bloody King Canute?’
‘Well, they say it takes all sorts.’ Number three up-ended a candle into a saucer, letting the wax drip before he anchored the candle firmly. ‘Right, gaffer. Let’s be having me marching orders.’
&nb
sp; ‘Just get as much water up as you can, as quick as you can.’ Joshua’s mind accepted that he was wearing his captain’s hat once again as he issued orders, handed out jobs, urged and cajoled. Captain Penny of the East Lancashire Fusiliers, in charge of his men, liked and respected because he would not ask them to do anything he would not willingly do himself.
In number four bedroom he glanced round at the tell-tale signs, the torch beam showing a waistcoat stained with yellow vomit over the back of a chair, an empty whisky bottle, an overflowing ashtray. His temper flared.
‘Out of there, man!’ Without ceremony Joshua whipped the blankets away. ‘On your feet, there’s work to be done.’
The man was a pitiful sight, but Joshua hardened his heart. He guessed how the poor devil felt, he could imagine the thousand demons pounding away in his head, but the careless blighter was responsible for this unholy mess! ‘On your feet!’ He waited none too patiently.
‘I can’t. If I bend over I’ll be sick again. Oh, God, is it worth it? Is anything bloody worth it?’
One minute he was lying there, sick and sorry for himself; the next he was out of bed, gasping as his bare feet met the drenched carpet. Yet he had no firm recollection of the man standing there having touched him. Brown eyes blazed at him from a face as hard as granite.
‘If you’re sick use that.’ Joshua thrust a bucket at him. ‘But for now face up to things. We know it was an accident, but buckle to and help to put it right. At the double! D’you hear me?’
By four o’clock they had done what could be done. A shivering Daisy was ordered back to bed by Joshua. ‘Do you want to be ill? Do you want to crack?’ He steeled himself against her pleading expression. ‘And change out of that nightgown. The hem’s soaking.’ His voice softened. ‘I’ll go down and make them a pot of tea, love. You can do your thanking later. They wanted to help.’ He half smiled. ‘All but your precious number four, though I soon had him sorted out.’
‘They are my guests.’ She was so tired the words came slurred.
Joshua shone the torch on to her feet, blue with cold and none too clean. Without giving himself time to think he scooped her up into his arms and carried her up to her room. Kicking the door open he deposited her none too gently on her bed. ‘Right! Are you going to take off that wet nightie, or do you want me to do it for you? That’s what your dad would have done, isn’t it, when you were a child? And if I remind you so much of him. …’
In the kitchen the four men leaned against whatever was handy and sipped hot sweet tea, as close as if they were lifelong mates. Joshua had seen it happen many times in France. Catapult a group of strange men into a crisis and they end up closer than blood brothers. Number three passed round a battered packet of Woodbines, and it was like lifting a curtain on his memories. … Shadowed weary faces lit by flickering candleshine, the quiet murmur of voices, frozen hands held round steaming tin mugs.
Number two had been in the bloody battle of the Somme. Number three had lost an eye at Ypres. Only number four was too young to join in the reminiscing.
‘The insurance?’ Sitting down at the table, lingering behind when the other two had gone up to bed, he buried his face in his hands. ‘Will Miss Bell be covered? It wasn’t an act of God, was it?’ He groaned. ‘Nothing goes right for me. Not one bloody thing. I’m a walking disaster zone, that’s me.’
‘Want to talk about it?’ Joshua sat down, facing him across the table. ‘If you feel like talking I’m here, listening.’
It was an all-too-familiar story. Days of tramping the streets in first one town then another. Shopkeepers shaking their heads, some of them hardly sparing him the time of day. At the end of the week an empty order book and the threat of finding himself out of work yet again. A wife and two children at home. Behind with the rent on their new council house and behind with the payments on the three-piece suite and the clothing club. Cardboard in his shoes because it seemed a drink and a smoke was more of a necessity.
‘The worst thing is knowing they’re going to say no even before I open my case.’ His voice breathed defeat.
‘Is what you’re trying to sell good quality? Value for money? Do you have faith in it?’
‘Yes, oh yes. You won’t get better writing paper nowhere.’
‘Then let that faith show.’ Joshua leaned forward. ‘Have you heard of thought transference?’
‘What’s that? I wasn’t much of a scholar, Sir. Book learning has always come hard to me.’
Joshua blinked at the ‘Sir’. He drummed impatient fingers on Daisy’s well-scrubbed table, weighing his words:
‘I had a pal during the war who had managed to evade the school system almost entirely. He had a vocabulary of about ten words, nine of them filthy, but what he saw out there in France incensed him so much he came home determined to get his own back somehow. He talked his way into a job; he convinced his employer he knew more about timber than the poor bewildered chap had forgotten. He went to the public library of every town he visited and made lists of all the builders. By the force of his anger – because it was anger driving him on – he persuaded them they needed more wood than they would ever use. He didn’t walk into their offices with his shoulders slumped, knowing they were going to say no. They’d been sitting on their fat behinds during the war while he’d been fighting that they might live, so he looked them straight in the eyes and. …’
Joshua paused. This insignificant little tyke didn’t look as if he’d ever stared his own mother straight in the eye, but he was taking it all in, nodding his head. ‘I’m angry too.’ He actually beat his puny chest. ‘I wasn’t in the war, but that wasn’t my fault, and I deserve better. My wife deserves better.’
‘Channel that anger in the right direction. Make it positive. Make it work for you.’
‘You smug bastard.’ Getting wearily into bed ten minutes later, Joshua closed his eyes. ‘Playing God isn’t a role you’re much fitted for, Captain Penny! You’re not making much of a success of your own life at the moment, are you?’
From along the landing he heard the muffled sound of coughing, fancied he heard Daisy turning over in bed.
He hoped she’d done as he told her and changed her wet nightgown; he told himself it was none of his business if she hadn’t. He snuffed out his candle and reminded himself to go out and phone the joyful Mr Leadbetter before breakfast. And fell asleep with the sound of the west wind rattling his window frame, overwhelmed with weariness and the utter hopelessness of his love.
Chapter Ten
IT TOOK JUST two months for Daisy to realize that her infatuation for Sam was over.
It was unbelievable, impossible that during those long frustrated months of her loving she had looked in her mirror and seen a face with a dreamy abstracted expression gazing back at her. With lips half parted and eyes shining like the proverbial stars. All because of Sam.
Impossible to accept that she had actually prayed to God for a letter with a London postmark; trembled at his nearness, wanted him, with her body actually aching for the need of him. Walked by his side with the wind on her face, and not known that the wind was blowing. Remembered every single word he had said to her, storing even the mundane remarks away in her head like jewels in a box, giving them fresh meanings each time she took them out to mull over them. Read his horoscope before her own in the morning newspaper; seen his likeness round every corner, down every street.
Work had helped her get over him, of course. There was plenty of that. The NO VACANCIES sign had gone up again in the window of Shangri-La. Mrs Mac was genuinely amazed at the way little Miss Bell had coped with the routine of shopping, cooking and cleaning, with only Mrs Whalley’s Winnie to help out. Mrs Mac was pleased for Daisy, of course, even though she was sure the reaction from her friend’s suicide was bound to set in. And there was never a peep about that chap from London. Not as much as a word about him for weeks now. She told San Remo next door that Shangri-La’s visitors got a bedtime drink with a homemade biscuit, all inclusive.
San Remo sniffed and said that Shangri-La would learn to cut corners with the rest of them in the end, especially in the winter when the trade went dead.
Winnie was pleased that Daisy – they were on first-name terms by now – had gone out with Mr Penny for his nightly constitutional, leaving her to serve the bedtime tea and biscuits. She could have a crafty fag if she left the back door wide open, and a hefty slice of Daisy’s richly moist slab cake. Not that she would be begrudged a crumb if she asked for it. Not being hungry all the time took a bit of getting used to; sleeping in a room of her own was taking even longer. Some nights she would lie awake on purpose, just for the novelty of being able to stretch her arms and legs out in bed as far as they would go without encountering a sister’s backside, or sharp toenails.
Finishing the cigarette, she wrapped the stub up in a piece of newspaper and buried it deep in the pig bin outside the back door. No point in looking for trouble, even though Daisy had never actually said she didn’t like Winnie smoking. A furtive fag tasted much better than one smoked openly, and anyroad the fag-end was the pig’s problem now, not hers.
Joshua and Daisy walked towards the North Shore, through the alpine rock gardens with their artificial crags.
‘Would you ever have imagined just after Florence died that you would be coping as well as you are?’ Joshua turned to Daisy, walking serenely by his side, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of a long knitted cardigan.