‘You didn’t know she was coming here?’
‘No, it was a big surprise. I thought she was in London.’ Ewan frowned and tried to think straight, to replay the scene yet one more time. When he’d seen Daisy standing there, had he also seen a glint of gold around her neck? Did she still wear his chain?
Probably not, he thought. She’d most likely sold it, pawned it, lost it long ago.
When he saw her again the following morning, he looked very carefully, and – definitely no chain.
After a week’s rehearsals, they had three plays up and running, and two more almost ready. In a company where everyone was young, lines were committed to memory very quickly, and professional arrogance was in relatively short supply. Everyone needed this to work, and knew it.
Sadie made it obvious to everyone she wasn’t keen on Daisy, and certainly didn’t want to be her friend. As time went on, Sadie’s animosity scorched Daisy like hot blasts from a volcano. Daisy hoped and prayed she’d never need to ask the other girl for a loan of make-up, pins or stockings.
She was relieved to find that Sadie also wanted to make this tour a big success. She didn’t upstage Daisy, she didn’t try to make her fluff her lines. She didn’t let her very obvious personal dislike affect the plays. But, off stage, Daisy was constantly aware of the burning hatred in Sadie’s hazel eyes.
They got into the theatre. The scenery – such as it was – had all been put in place. The lighting man was sober. The first play would be opening to the public that same night.
‘Mungo’s very good,’ said Daisy, as she and Ewan stood in the wings while Sadie and Mungo Campbell, the other actor from the Glasgow Comrades who had taken Sandy’s shilling, ran through a scene together.
‘Maybe he doesn’t have to kiss her quite so hard,’ said Ewan, who was watching Mungo closely.
‘Yes, he does – he’s desperately in love with her, they’re planning to elope.’ Daisy glanced at Ewan. ‘But only in the play, of course. Off stage, it’s obvious she’s in love with you.’
Ewan merely shrugged.
When the actors took a break, Sadie came rushing over to Ewan, shoving Daisy to one side so she could sit with him. She grinned at him flirtatiously and rubbed herself against him, like a cat – a cat who knew she’d got the cream, and meant to lick it up.
Daisy saw she’d lost him, and her heart was sore.
Chapter Nineteen
Who was he trying to fool?
Ewan knew his eyes were following Daisy everywhere, that Sadie saw him watching, and was jealous.
He couldn’t decide what he should do, anything or nothing. He didn’t want to hurt poor Sadie, who he knew depended on him, loved him, needed him.
He didn’t want to be the sort of man who played cruel games and trampled over other people’s feelings wearing hobnail boots. A man like Trent.
Daisy hadn’t given him any encouragement, anyway.
Although there were days when Daisy wished that she was anywhere but Leeds, when Ewan and Sadie seemed to be a living, breathing, mortifying example of the perfect loving couple, she knew she had to stick it out.
She and Ewan were thrown together all the time. In two of the plays, they had been cast as lovers, and Daisy had to remind herself that when he looked at her with joy or longing in his eyes, he was a player, he was acting.
But it was so difficult to see him, touch him, kiss him, flirt with him, and know it was a sham, that whatever he might have felt a year ago, these days he felt nothing for her at all.
Every passionate kiss was in reality chaste and cold. Sometimes, he didn’t even kiss at all, just brushed her mouth with his, and he was always more than ready to pull away.
On rest days, the whole company invariably went out as one, for Sandy believed in fostering a good community spirit, and in everybody being friends.
Then Sadie hurt her foot, and couldn’t join an expedition the company had planned to Ilkley Moor.
‘But you all go,’ said Sandy, who added that he wasn’t really a walker anyway, and he’d stay with Sadie. ‘It’s a lovely morning, it’s a shame to waste a rest day, and you need fresh air and exercise. You’ve hired your boots and sticks, and you won’t get your money back.’
‘Yes, off you go,’ said Sadie, and looked at Daisy meaningfully, as if she were saying, don’t think you’re going to have any fun with Ewan, because he’s mine.
Daisy thought, you mustn’t worry, Ewan isn’t interested in me, and we’ll have four or five other people with us, anyway.
‘You’re looking puffed,’ said Ewan, as Daisy struggled up a slope.
They were a couple of hours into their ramble, having left Sandy and Sadie drinking in the saloon bar of the little countryside hotel where they had all got off the bus.
‘I’ll be all right,’ said Daisy. But she had turned her ankle earlier on, and now she couldn’t keep up with Mungo Campbell and the others. She sat down in the shelter of a rock, pulled off her boot and rubbed the joint, which looked pink and swollen. ‘Maybe I’ll sit here a bit and read, and you can pick me up when you come back.’
‘So come on, Fraser,’ Mungo said. ‘Away, and leave the lassie with her book.’
‘She could make a fire for us, perhaps,’ said one of the other men.
‘Aye, get the kettle on, she could, for when we come back down the hill.’ Rummaging in his battered army issue khaki backpack, Mungo produced a workman’s billy-can, a twist of tea leaves, a copy of the Daily Worker and a lemonade bottle full of water.
‘I’ll stay with Daisy, if she doesn’t mind.’ Ewan sat down too, and yawned. ‘I’d quite like a nap.’
‘You’re having too much sex, man,’ Mungo told him, scornfully. ‘Wee Sadie’s worn you out. Very well then, keep the lassie company. But if you make a brew-up, mind you don’t use all the water.’
As Mungo and the others strode off, Daisy looked at Ewan. ‘You didn’t have to stay,’ she said, and felt her cheeks grow scarlet.
‘I know I didn’t. But you’ve hurt your ankle, you look tired, and it didn’t seem very kind to leave you.’ Ewan glanced at Daisy’s swollen ankle. ‘You need a cold compress. Otherwise, you’ll never get your boot back on, and then what will you do?’
‘Mungo said we mustn’t waste the water,’ murmured Daisy, looking at her foot.
‘Oh, bugger Mungo.’ Ewan got out his handkerchief and poured cold water over it, and then he wrapped it tightly round Daisy’s damaged ankle. She tingled at his touch on her bare skin, and hoped he wouldn’t look up and see her face.
‘In ten minutes or so, when it feels numb, you must put your boot back on,’ he said. ‘Lace it up as tight as you can bear it, and then you’ll be all right.’
‘Thank you,’ Daisy said politely, picking up her book. ‘I’ll be fine now, Ewan,’ she added, primly. ‘You can go to sleep.’
But Ewan lounged there, looking at her, pulling at a clump of purple heather. ‘Daisy,’ he began, ‘I hope it’s not too difficult for you, having to act with me?’
‘Of course it isn’t difficult,’ Daisy told him, her eyes fixed on her book. ‘It’s very nice to see you, and have a chance to act with you again.’
‘It’s lovely to see you.’ Then, Daisy happened to glance up, and Ewan smiled, and her heart did cartwheels. ‘When I walked into that room above the Wakefield Arms, and saw you standing there, it was like Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one.’
‘Ewan, don’t,’ cried Daisy.
‘Ewan, don’t what?’ said Ewan.
‘Be so nice to me.’ Daisy forced herself to look at him, to meet his gaze. ‘I was really horrible to you. I belittled and embarrassed you. I flirted with that awful man. Then I went off with him, although I knew you’d be upset. I’m sorry, Ewan. I’m delighted that you’re happy again with Sadie.’
‘Thank you.’ Ewan tugged more heather, twisting it round and round his fingers. ‘Daisy?’
‘Yes?’
‘You and Trent – it didn’t work out?’ Now Ewan was staring fixedly at a rocky outcrop on a distant hill.
‘There was really nothing to work out. When we went to London, we were trying to find engagements, that was all.’
‘But you liked him, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘He seduced you.’ Ewan kept his gaze fixed on the hill. ‘He talked you into bed, then left you. Didn’t he, the bastard?’
‘It’s more or less what happened, except that I left him.’ Daisy shrugged. ‘I was stupid. I thought I was in love, but I was chasing rainbows.’
‘But you’re over him?’
‘I’m definitely over him.’
‘I won’t pretend I liked him, but I’m sorry things went wrong for you.’ Ewan turned back to face her and looked into her eyes. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know we’ve had some rather awkward moments, you and I. But whatever happens, I’ll always be your friend.’
‘I – thank you, Ewan.’ He was so near, they were alone, and she was so tempted to pull him close, to kiss him, then tell him she was sorrier than he could ever know, was heartbroken because she knew she’d lost him.
‘Why don’t you have your nap now?’ she suggested.
‘Why don’t you have one, too?’ He lay back on the heather. ‘Come on, you’re tired,’ he added, stretching out one arm so she could lie beside him, so she could rest her head upon his shoulder. He smiled at her, his green eyes chips of emerald in the sunshine. ‘It won’t mean anything.’
I know, thought Daisy, sadly, and that’s why I can’t do it. ‘I’m going to read my book,’ she said. ‘You go to sleep.’
So Ewan crossed his arms upon his chest and shut his eyes. Daisy sat and stared down at her book, but didn’t read a word.
When Mungo and the others came back, Daisy had a fire going, and the water boiling.
‘I see you’ve worn young Fraser out,’ said Mungo. ‘I dunno what all you women see in him.’
‘You’ve a dirty mind,’ said Ewan, opening one eye. ‘We’ve just been sitting here and talking.’
‘A likely story, man.’ Mungo grinned and cracked his raw, red knuckles, eyeing Daisy wolfishly. ‘Where’s my Daily Worker?’
‘I burned it,’ Daisy told him. ‘It made excellent kindling, actually.’
‘A hindrance to the struggle – that’s what you are, woman,’ muttered Mungo, and then slumped down beside them, scowling furiously.
The season was turning out to be a very mild success, covering its expenses, paying the actors’ and producer’s salaries, and making just the tiniest of profits week by week. But this was as much as Sandy Taylor had dared hope, he told the company, in these increasingly wretched days of unemployment, heartache and despair.
‘We live in mean and grubby times,’ he said, and Daisy knew exactly what he meant, for life was grey and thwarted – or hers was, anyway.
Anxious to avoid the happy couple, she took to spending much of her free time in the local spit and sawdust pubs with Sandy and Mungo Campbell. Sitting in the bar and getting kippered by all the foetid smoke from workmen’s pipes, she and Mungo listened to Sandy’s stories about the older, married women he had loved and lost.
‘You’re like the Prince of Wales,’ said Daisy, trying to sound more sympathetic than she really felt, for privately she was a bit disgusted by young men who fancied tough old hens.
‘Yes, but if I were the Prince of Wales, I’d only have to tap the husband on the shoulder, and he’d move aside, not square up to me,’ said Sandy, scowling down into his pint of best.
‘Away, man – you’re a pervert, you want tae fuck your mother,’ Mungo told him, scornfully. ‘The lassie should be younger than the laddie every time. It’s a law of nature. Me, I’d never dip a fat old sheep, if I could get a lamb.’
‘Campbell, you’re never going to dip the lamb you’ve got your eye on,’ retorted Sandy. ‘We’ve all noticed the way you look at Sadie. If I were Fraser, I would stick one on you.’
‘Fraser wouldnae even try it,’ Mungo growled belligerently. ‘He knows I’d lay him out.’ He flexed his worker’s hands, and cracked his knuckles one by one. ‘But the de’il only knows what a lass like Sadie sees in him. I’d have thought she’d want a real man. A working man.’
Unlike Ewan and Sadie, who seemed to have put their left-wing sympathies in storage while they were in Leeds, Mungo still spoke the language and wore the uniform – the collarless shirt and corduroys, the flannel neck cloth and big heavy boots – of the ordinary working man. He played his parts in all the rather anodyne, lower middle class dramas they were putting on in Leeds, somewhat sarcastically.
But Daisy couldn’t blame him when her own heart wasn’t in it. As she trotted through her various roles of dutiful daughter, innocent ingenue and kindly sister, night after boring night, getting polite applause and equally polite, respectful notices in the local press, she wondered why she was doing this at all.
That silly melodrama Blighted Blossoms had had a lot more bite. The revue had been a lot more fun. Besides, they really needed her at home. Rose’s letters had that tone of bright and brittle optimism which Daisy knew meant things were going badly.
We miss you, love, she said. I’m glad to know you’re happy, and that things are working out in Leeds. We’d love to come and see you, as you know. But right now it’s impossible for your father or me to get away. I’m sure you understand.
The chickens are doing well. I have an arrangement with the local egg man now. He comes to collect the baskets every Saturday and Wednesday, and I’m earning enough to pay most of the vet’s bills, as well as the boys’ school fees.
The twins both send their love, and say they’d like some picture postcards, if you can spare the time to send them some.
Sadie and Ewan carried on being deliriously in love. She positively glowed with happiness, and every smile she gave her lover scraped another graze on Daisy’s heart.
Ewan wasn’t physically bigger than when she’d met him in the rehearsal room above the pub. But in the past few months he’d sort of grown. He wasn’t an awkward boy, he was a man. More to the point, he had the relaxed and easy confidence of a happy man.
He didn’t yell at the audience any more. Instead, he played to them, took them into his confidence, and they loved him just like Sadie did. Each night, he got the most applause, and Mungo Campbell’s scowls grew even grimmer.
Daisy tried to be brisk and friendly when she spoke to Ewan, but it was very hard. She watched in silent misery as he touched Sadie’s shoulder, as he kissed her on the cheek, and lavished upon her all the light caresses that happy lovers do.
She’d been such a fool. She’d thrown a good man’s love away.
The day the season finished and the company got out, a letter came from Rose.
The twins are in trouble yet again, she wrote. But it’s serious this time. They were caught on Michael Easton’s land, the police became involved, and the boys were charged with trespass and malicious damage.
As you can imagine, Alex isn’t very pleased. Of course, the twins are guilty, and so there’s no defence. Alex knows we can’t afford the sort of fine the magistrate, who’s very thick with Mike, will almost certainly hand down. But if we don’t pay, the twins could end up being birched, or sent away. I don’t quite know what we shall do.
Daisy sighed. Poor Rose and Alex, good as gold themselves, they’d somehow managed to raise a trio of juvenile delinquents.
She checked her bank book. In the past few months, she’d saved a mere three pounds, which almost certainly wouldn’t be enough to pay a fine. She also had to settle up with her landlady, then get hers
elf back home.
Sandy Taylor had got a company together for a spring and summer season in places like Southend and Eastbourne, taking some of the people who were in Leeds along with him.
But Ewan, Sadie and Mungo were going back to Scotland, to try to interest managements in drama studio versions of some of Shakespeare’s plays – Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet – which Ewan had adapted for three players, so they would be very cheap to do. He’d been writing letters all that week.
‘Good luck to them,’ said Sandy Taylor. ‘Fraser will have his work cut out, though – Scots don’t always go for men in togas, or in tights.’
‘I think they’re going to do the plays in modern dress,’ said Daisy.
‘I don’t like Shakespeare done in modern dress,’ said Sandy Taylor. ‘But our Mr Campbell will make a good Mercutio, the sarcastic, touchy bastard. Fraser will be in his element as Romeo. I can imagine Sadie hanging off a balcony, or more likely ladder, carrying on as Juliet.’
Daisy’s heart contracted at the thought of Sadie playing Ewan’s Juliet.
‘What about you, Daisy Denham, won’t you reconsider coming with us to the seaside?’ went on Sandy, for Daisy had told him she would not be going to Southend because they needed her at home. ‘You can’t keep chopping and changing, love, being an actress one year, and mucking out pigs down on the farm the next. As you already know, it’s hard to get anywhere in this damned profession. It’s much harder still if you don’t take it seriously.’
‘I do take it seriously,’ said Daisy, imagining Rose’s worried face and wishing she was at home.
‘But do you have that kernel of ambition everybody needs, even when they have a wealth of talent?’ persisted Sandy Taylor. ‘Do you have the necessary hunger? When you’re on stage, you’re fine. I’ve no complaints. You have the makings of an actress, and maybe you could even be a great one, who can tell? But do you want it? Do you have the hunger?’
The Golden Chain Page 23