Phoebe merely fiddled with her sandwiches and scones, but she drank several cups of tea. ‘I ’ave to watch me figure,’ she explained. ‘I ain’t gonna dance it off, like you. Go on, ’ave a fancy.’
‘I don’t eat much sweet stuff, it gives me spots,’ Daisy said apologetically. She’d eaten only half a fancy, and for some reason she’d gone off the scones.
‘You ain’t got any spots, you silly girl. So come on, eat up,’ snapped Phoebe. ‘I ain’t payin’ out good money for nothin’.’ But then she blushed, and shook her head. ‘Sorry, love,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be so sharp. I ’spect you’ve wondered about me all your life?’ she added, picking up the silver sugar tongs.
‘No, I didn’t find out about you till a year ago,’ admitted Daisy. ‘Mum – sorry, I mean Rose – told me last summer I was adopted.’
‘Oh.’ Phoebe looked both embarrassed and annoyed. ‘So up until then, you thought you was Rose’s and Alex’s kid?’
‘Well, naturally.’
‘They been good to you?’
‘Yes, they’ve been wonderful.’ As Daisy said it, she realised she meant it, and she felt a pang of longing for the people who would always be her mum and dad.
‘They tell you about your real dad?’ asked Phoebe.
‘No, and I didn’t ask them,’ Daisy said, and shrugged. ‘I thought perhaps they didn’t know.’
‘Oh, they knows all right.’ Phoebe crushed a sugar cube with more than casual violence. ‘You know the bloke what lives at Easton Hall, near Rose and Alex’s place?’
‘Yes, Sir Michael Easton. But I don’t actually know him. He doesn’t have anything to do with us.’
‘I wonder why,’ said Phoebe savagely. ‘Listen, ’ere’s the facts. I knew ’im in the war years, when I was on the ’alls, an’ he was a regular stage door Johnny. All us girls was very sweet on ’im, on account of ’e was very ’andsome an’ generous with ’is cash. So anyway, we ’ad a little fling, and you was the result.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Daisy stared in horror. ‘How could you have met Sir Michael Easton, and if I’m his daughter, why doesn’t he want me? Why don’t I live with him?’
‘Calm down, Daisy, darlin, keep your voice down.’ Phoebe touched her daughter’s hand, but Daisy jerked it back, as if her mother’s were red hot. ‘In the war years, people got about a bit. Rose was a nurse in London, as I ’spect you know, an’ she was friendly with my sister.
‘Mike was sweet on Rose, an’ he come up to London once to see ’er. Me and my boyfriend walked into this restaurant, and there she was with ’im. She was in ’er nurse’s uniform, an’ he was an officer. God, ’e looked so gorgeous! We was introduced – ’
‘So it all went on from there.’ Daisy glared at Phoebe, blue eyes glittering. ‘Sir Michael wanted to marry Mum, you know.’
‘Yeah, I did know that. But Rose, she didn’t want to marry ’im, she told me so.’ Phoebe looked at Daisy. ‘Darlin’, she’s very ’appy with ’er Alex, she told me that ’erself.’
‘You spoiled it all for Mum!’ cried Daisy, glaring. ‘You deliberately wrecked her life!’
‘No, Daisy, you don’t understand, I – ’
‘It’s all your fault, the mess they’re in at home, the fact we haven’t got any money – ’
‘Daisy, just ’ang on just a minute,’ interrupted Phoebe. ‘God, I shouldn’t have told you so abrupt – ’
‘No, I’m glad you told me!’ Daisy stood up, blue eyes blazing. ‘I should have been told all sorts of things, years and years ago! You’ve all lied to me!’
Daisy pushed her chair away, snatched up her old tweed jacket. ‘You abandoned me!’ she cried, as the entire restaurant turned to stare. ‘If Rose and Alex hadn’t adopted me, I’d have ended up in some disgusting East End orphanage, along with all the other nameless bastards. All the time I was growing up, you never had any contact with me, never wanted to know about me, never even sent a birthday card.
‘But then, all of a sudden, you walk back into my life, buy me lots of expensive junk, ask me to call you Mommy and want me to go home with you. Well, forget it, Phoebe, it’s not going to happen. I’m going now. I never want to set eyes on you again.’
‘Darlin’, don’t forget your bags!’ cried Phoebe, as Daisy strode off across the deep pile carpet.
But Daisy kept on walking. When she was in the street again she thought, I must stop making scenes in restaurants and walking out on people, it’s becoming quite a habit.
Chapter Sixteen
Ewan was definitely corrupting Sadie, taking her to places where there were chromium tables and red leathercloth banquettes, and where he bought American toasted sandwiches – not stovies, bridies, white pudding fritters or other wholesome Scottish fare.
He also took her to the talkies where she watched the musicals with arms folded and pursed lips, but when he glanced at her he could see she was enjoying herself, that her foot was tapping, and she was having wicked, bourgeois fun.
‘It’s not that I object to people dancing,’ she said wistfully, as they came out into the evening twilight. ‘But dancing isn’t relevant to the struggle.’
‘You’re allowed a few hours off,’ said Ewan. ‘The struggle will somehow carry on without you, if you take a little break.’
‘Maybe,’ admitted Sadie, as she ran her fingers through her newly Marcelled waves. She’d had it done to find out what it felt like, having hot iron rods dragged through her hair. She needed to understand why otherwise intelligent women put themselves through stuff like this – or so she said. She seemed put out when Ewan said it suited her, that she looked very pretty.
If she didn’t watch it, Ewan thought, one day Red Sadie was going to wake up and find she was – unlike Red Mungo, the dauntless champion of the workers – middle class.
Living in a commune, sharing everything and looking out for one another, that was grand. Ewan wasn’t disputing it. But, like the other Comrades, he was getting somewhat tired of living in the warehouse. Mungo had been moaning about climbing all those stairs when he was drunk. Other, more disreputable, people had been moving in and occupying the lower floors.
The police were prowling round the place more often, and Ewan said perhaps the four men in the company should think of trying to find another place, a boarding house or something? Sadie, of course, could go back to her parents’ house.
Their notices were fine, he added, they were earning reasonable money, so if they didn’t want to find a boarding house, why not rent a tenement apartment?
‘Perhaps,’ said Mungo, flexing his red worker’s hands and cracking his worker’s knuckles. ‘If it’s cheap, and if the landlord isn’t a bloated capitalist oppressor of the proletariat, we might consider it.’
‘I’m moving in as well,’ said Sadie, who was clearly anxious not to be left out. ‘We’ll still be a commune, and still committed to the struggle.’
‘You’re a guid wee wifie,’ Mungo said, approvingly.
Daisy arrived back at her digs in Clapham hot and tired. She’d walked home all the way, and the day was far too warm for Amy’s smart tweed suit.
She was still furious with Phoebe, but she was more furious with herself for being such a fool, for being taken in so easily, being so very willing to be seduced by Phoebe’s gaudy, tawdry charm.
As she climbed the stairs up to her room, she began to feel a little calmer. If Jesse’s foot was not too sore, they could walk down to the Lamb and Flag, then she could tell him what had happened, and he would sympathise.
Or, if he was still resting it, they could stay at home, and she could make some supper on the gas ring on the landing. She’d go and get some ham or something from the corner shop – they’d put it on the slate – and then she and Jesse could have ham and fried potatoes in his room.
Sh
e tapped on Jesse’s door. She heard a muffled giggle, and Jesse saying, sssh, and then, hang on a minute! But Daisy was in no mood to mess about. Opening the door, she marched straight in.
Jesse was lying face down on the bed, his wrists tied to the head rail. Belinda from the chorus line was lying next to him, wearing a black silk petticoat and smoking, a birch switch in her hand. Jesse’s back was hatched with streaks of blood.
Daisy stared in horror.
Whatever were they doing?
Why was Jesse letting Belinda hurt him?
What was going on?
But then it all clicked into place. The whole room stank of sex and alcohol. It smelled so rank and foxy that she gagged. The bile rose in her throat.
The ground caved in beneath her feet a second time that day. She felt so stupid, so ashamed, so totally ridiculous that she could have cried.
She turned and fled. She ran back down the stairs and out of the front door, gasping for what passed in London for fresh air.
She was packing in her room when Jesse came to talk to her, wearing just a velvet dressing gown he’d stolen from some costume hamper, smelling like a brewery, his black hair ruffled up like raven’s feathers.
‘It wasn’t what it looked like,’ he began, his voice soft and caressing. ‘Darling, you mustn’t go. You mustn’t leave me. I – ’
‘Don’t talk to me,’ snapped Daisy.
‘Sweetheart, you must understand that sometimes I have needs.’ Jesse sat down on Daisy’s bed and tried to take her hand.
She slapped him off.
‘You’re so young, so inexperienced,’ he continued, gamely ploughing on. ‘You’re still on the nursery slopes of sex. So I couldn’t have asked you to do that – at least, not yet. But whatsername’s an instrument, that’s all. She doesn’t mean a thing to me.’
‘Oh?’ Daisy clicked the locks shut. ‘But while you were with whatsername, I didn’t mean a thing.’
‘Daisy, you mean everything to me!’
‘I should have listened to Amy,’ muttered Daisy, more to herself than Jesse. ‘Amy and Julia, they both had your number from the start. God, I was so horrible to Ewan – ’
‘Oh, that’s right, drag your precious Ewan into it,’ sneered Jesse. ‘That’s what you women always do. The man you love upsets you, so you start carrying on about some hopeless deadbeat who used to drive you mad.’
‘Don’t you dare slander Ewan!’ Daisy cried. ‘One day, he’ll be a star, you wait and see!’
‘I’ll hold my breath,’ yawned Jesse, raking a languid hand through his becomingly tousled hair.
‘My God, you’re such a poser, such a fraud, such a performer!’ Daisy glared at him. ‘Listen, Jesse Trent. I don’t care what you do, what needs you have. I might be inexperienced, but I’m old enough to realise that people must like different things in bed. I’m leaving you because you lied to me. All that rubbish about your father, all the sympathy you milked from me, it was all fabrication, wasn’t it?’
‘Perhaps I did embroider just a little. But – ’
‘What does your father really do?’
‘He’s a carpet salesman.’
‘Do you come from Yorkshire?’
‘Not exactly – my parents live in Dunstable. Dad wanted me to be a bank clerk, civil servant, something boring and respectable. But I wanted to be an actor. So I left.’
‘Do you ever see your family?’
‘No, I borrowed a little money the last time I was there.’ Jesse shrugged. ‘It would be rather awkward to go back.’
‘You mean you stole their savings. You really are a rogue and vagabond.’
Daisy picked her case up, but Jesse grabbed her wrist. ‘Darling, you can’t walk out on me, into the big, bad city. Where do you think you’re going to go? Oh, did Phoebe ask you – ’
‘Yes she did and no I’m not,’ snapped Daisy. ‘I’m going back to Dorset.’
‘You mean you’re going home?’
‘Yes, Mr Double Dealer, I’m going back to Charton with my tail between my legs. I’m going crawling back to Mum and Dad.’ Daisy shook him off and stared him out, her blue eyes flashing dangerously. ‘You want to make something of it, do you?’
‘Just hang on a minute. What about Mr Hanson – have you thought of him? He gave us our first break in London, and everybody says it’s very dangerous to cross him. What about his show?’
‘Damn the show,’ said Daisy. ‘Damn Mr Hanson, damn his show, and damn you, too.’ She put her case down, rummaged in her handbag, and found the bottle of cologne she’d bought with her own money, not with Phoebe’s. ‘Jesse?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is for you, so make the most of it.’ Daisy dropped the heavy crystal bottle on his foot, picked up her case and ran downstairs, leaving Jesse cursing on the landing.
The train took hours, but the walk from Charton station to the bailiff’s cottage was less than half a mile. So she was nearly home, and she was glad.
But she wasn’t yet ready to face her parents, because even after sitting on the train for all those hours, and thinking until she had a pounding headache, Daisy was still all churned up inside.
Why hadn’t Rose replied to all the recent letters she had sent from London? She usually replied to Daisy’s letters by return of post.
Oh God, thought Daisy, maybe Rose was going to say Alex and I have done our duty, fed you, clothed you, sheltered you. But you’re not our child. You’ve found your natural mother now, so off you go, and don’t come here again.
It would serve her right, she thought. She’d been such an ungrateful little cow. She didn’t deserve to be their daughter any more.
Phoebe had apparently assumed that Daisy would abandon Rose and Alex, and swan off to America for good. Daisy had to admit she had been tempted by a vision of her name in lights on Broadway, and had for a few seconds believed that Phoebe’s husband was some kind of big shot who’d be able to arrange it.
As for Jesse – she couldn’t imagine why she’d ever thought he was attractive, ever thought she was in love with him. As she walked up the path to the bailiff’s cottage, the smell of bridges burned down to their foundations filled the soft, night air.
She hadn’t realised it was quite so late. The Dorset sky was a bluish-reddish-orange-purple, promising a perfect day tomorrow, and the moon was still a pale ghost, but it must be well past ten o’clock. The cottage lights were out, and she supposed they must all be in bed. Of course, she thought, they had to get up early for the milking.
She hadn’t got a key, so she knocked softly on the door, and a few minutes later Rose came down and opened it.
‘Mum?’ said Daisy fearfully, seeing at once from Rose’s face that something must be wrong.
‘Oh, Daisy, darling! I’m so relieved you’ve come!’ Rose threw her arms round Daisy neck and hugged her tightly, and Daisy could feel tears on her cheek, although she knew she wasn’t crying. ‘But how did you know to come today?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You didn’t get my wire?’
‘No.’ Daisy’s heart was hammering. ‘Tell me, what’s the matter – is it you, or Dad, the boys?’
But Rose was sobbing now and couldn’t speak. Daisy took her back inside, sat her at the kitchen table, put the kettle on and made some tea.
‘Mum?’ said Daisy softly, as she set out cups and saucers and found a bowl of sugar.
‘It’s Alex.’ Rose managed to choke it out at last. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s not been well for a few days – that’s why I sent the wire – but yesterday morning he collapsed. Now he’s in hospital in Dorchester. They’ve done a lot of tests, but they don’t know what’s wrong.’
‘But he’s not dying?’ demanded Daisy, urgently. ‘Mum, it’s not that serious? H
e’s not going to die?’
‘I hope not, but – ’
Rose shrugged and looked so helpless and so little that Daisy could have wept. ‘What about the boys?’ she asked.
‘Oh, the twins are fine.’ Rose smiled through her tears. ‘They’ve been such bricks! I’m sorry if I frightened you,’ she added. ‘It was the shock of seeing you, standing on the doorstep at this time of night. It was as if I’d summoned you, and you had come home. But we should go to bed. I’ll have to be up at five tomorrow morning. Come on, I’ll make your bed up.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Daisy. ‘You go back to bed and go to sleep.’
‘If you’re not too tired, I’d like to have your company for a few minutes more.’ Rose brushed her hand across her eyes. ‘I can’t sleep, anyway.’
So Daisy made more tea, and talked to Rose a little longer, and then she went to bed. But she didn’t sleep – too much had happened for her to sleep. All night she heard Rose pacing up and down, the scrape of matches as Rose lit cigarettes, the clatter as she put the kettle on, again, again.
When she got up, bleary-eyed and sluggish at five the following morning, she found that Robert and Stephen were as glad to see her as Rose had been last night.
They’ve changed, thought Daisy, as she watched them hurry across the yard. The brats are growing up.
They were still two scruffy-looking kids, but they were doing all the milking, looking after their mother and the farm, and taking the responsibility that Daisy knew she should have taken. She shouldn’t have gone gallivanting off, and showing her legs to anyone with a bob or two to spare.
‘What do you think is wrong with Dad?’ she asked. ‘Mum, you can tell me, you know, even if you don’t want to tell the twins. You don’t have to treat me like a child. I don’t have to be protected.’
‘He’s been working much too hard,’ said Rose.
‘That’s all?’
‘I hope so, Daisy. I can’t afford to lose him. I’d be nothing without him.’
The Golden Chain Page 20