‘Sandy, I’m a two-bit entertainer, not Dame Ellen Terry. I play juveniles and people’s sisters in provincial plays.’
‘But you could be a star, you know. You have that special quality, you can hold an audience in your hand.’
‘Do you think so, Sandy?’ Daisy asked him doubtfully, feeling she was being torn in two.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Sandy. ‘One day, I’ll be seeing you at Drury Lane – that’s if you haven’t married some fat farmer and buried yourself in Dorset for all time.’
She got the next train home. But as she sat in the third class compartment, trying to read the paper and take some interest in what was happening in the real world, she wished she was going to Southend with Sandy Taylor and his company. She’d most probably have fitted in.
‘She wouldn’t have fitted in,’ insisted Sadie, as Ewan and she and Mungo got on the train to Glasgow. ‘I agree we could have done with someone else, but Daisy’s not the one.’
‘She’s a lightweight,’ added Mungo Campbell. ‘She’s fine for comedy and melodrama, but she couldn’t do the serious stuff. She has a frivolous mind.’
‘You’re only saying that because she burned your Daily Worker,’ Ewan told him.
‘You’re only sticking up for her because she has nice legs and big blue eyes.’ Sadie made a face at Ewan. ‘I think you might have had a little crush on Daisy Denham.’
A little crush does not begin to cover it, thought Ewan, looking back at Sadie, who annoyed him more and more with every passing day.
Charton looked the very same as when she’d seen it last. Golden in the sunshine, as it must have looked for a hundred, two, three, four, five hundred years, or more.
Rose was not at home. Alex was probably in the kitchen garden with Mr Hobson and his son, or out in the fields with the cows. So Daisy left her suitcase in the cottage porch, and then she went to find the twins.
‘Honestly,’ she cried, when she found her brothers in the stables, giving their menagerie their supper, ‘I can’t turn my back for fifteen minutes without you wretched children getting into trouble. What were you doing, you little clots?’
‘Letting innocent animals out of traps,’ retorted Stephen, cradling a rabbit which he was stroking tenderly. ‘Surely you don’t think that was wrong? Daze, we released three foxes, a young badger!’
‘But you got caught, you idiots!’ Daisy glared at them. ‘As if Mum and Dad don’t have enough to worry about!’
‘Oh, look who’s talking now!’ Robert glared back at Daisy. ‘Not so very long ago, you were running off to Scotland with that ginger chap from Easton Hall. Then you went off to London without telling anybody where you’d gone.’
‘You hardly wrote to them at all when you were up in Leeds,’ continued Stephen. ‘If Mum and Dad have more grey hairs than when you saw them last, it’s you as well as us who put them there.’
Daisy let that pass. ‘What have you done with all the injured foxes and other things you found?’ she asked. ‘I hope you didn’t let them go and limp into the undergrowth, to die a really slow and painful death?
‘Of course not, stupid,’ Robert said. ‘We put them all in baskets, and then we brought them home. They’re here in the stables.’
‘Oh, and I just bet that thrills the rabbits.’
‘They’re in a different part of the stables, idiot – in our infirmary.’ Stephen looked at Daisy as if she were a fool. ‘We can’t afford a vet, of course, but we got some books out of the library to find out how to treat them.’
‘We made them muzzles so they couldn’t bite us. We cleaned up all their wounds,’ continued Robert, ‘made splints for all their broken bones, and collars out of cardboard so they couldn’t chew their dressings off.’
‘So now they’re all doing really well, that’s except for one poor stoat, who died.’
‘The baby badger with the broken leg is getting better, he can walk again.’
‘We’re going to release him on our land.’
‘Dad says we may.’
‘What about the foxes – feeding them on Mum’s best chicken, are you?’ Daisy asked the boys sarcastically.
‘No, of course not, they’re having to make do with scraps and worms.’
‘Easton is a bloody sadist, Daze. Everybody in the village hates him,’ muttered Robert, grimly. ‘Don’t look at me like that, I know it’s swearing.’
‘They say he was a coward in the war,’ continued Stephen. ‘Our father was a hero, and he got the DSO. It was in the Dorset Echo. Mrs Gorton at the village shop has kept the cutting, and she showed it to us once. But Sir Michael Sadist didn’t get anything.’
‘Daze, there’s no need for all those iron traps in all the woods,’ insisted Robert. ‘Sir Michael Sadist just likes hurting things.’
‘The kinds of traps his keeper uses are illegal these days,’ Stephen said. ‘We went and looked it up. We’re going to tell the magistrate about it when we go to court, and then Sir Michael will be fined.’
‘You wish,’ said Daisy.
‘But Daze, he breaks the law.’
‘Listen, you little idiots,’ cried Daisy, ‘don’t you understand? In this part of Dorset, Michael Easton is the law!’
She looked from one twin to another, suddenly furious with Michael Easton, who had too much power for his own good. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’m going to see him.’
‘Who?’
‘Sir Michael Easton.’ Daisy put her hat straight, squared her shoulders. ‘I should have done it long ago. I’m going to see him now.’
‘But, Daze, you can’t!’ cried Robert. ‘Dad says we must keep off Easton’s land.’
‘He didn’t say that to me.’
Still in her best high heels, her last pair of silk stockings and the smart tweed travelling costume Amy had given her as a parting gift, Daisy set off along the gated road, which was the quickest way to Easton Hall – far quicker than the cliff path, even though going this way meant she was trespassing on Easton land.
By the time she panted up the drive which led to Easton Hall, she was sweating heavily from exertion, as well as hot with rage.
Chapter Twenty
After she had rung the bell, after the family butler had looked her up and down with cool disdain, after she’d eventually been invited to state her name and business, Daisy was kept waiting on the steps of Easton Hall for almost half an hour.
The maid who finally admitted her didn’t condescend to speak. She didn’t offer to take her jacket, and didn’t offer her any refreshment, even a glass of water, which Daisy desperately needed, but for which she was too proud to ask.
The Easton family was clearly very rich. They must have had good brokers, she decided, ruefully. The place was furnished in the latest style, and the mingled scents of beeswax, Spanish leather and artificial jasmine filled the air.
There were hothouse flowers in huge arrangements on almost all flat surfaces, massed explosions of purple, red and gold, even though the grounds of Easton Hall were full of daffodils and tulips, and all the lovely, gentle colours of an English spring.
Daisy was led along a beautifully decorated hallway, hung with family portraits and carpeted with the softest, silkiest, cream-white Berber rugs. Then she was shown into a fussy drawing room, full of expensive, nasty modern china, which she at once decided must be Lady Easton’s taste.
There, she cooled her heels and fanned her face, telling herself she must stay calm, and that there was nothing to be gained from telling Sir Michael Easton what she really thought of him.
She hadn’t meant her very first meeting with the man who was supposed to be her natural father to be quite like this. In fact, as she had huffed and puffed her way along the gated road to Easton Hall, she had quite forgotten that Sir Michael was allegedly her father. She’d come
to Easton Hall for just one reason, to make him drop the charge against the twins.
Then someone came into the room, and Daisy found she was face to face with Michael Easton. Or so she supposed, since she had asked to speak to him. This man was smartly barbered, neatly shaven, and immaculately suited in the height of fashion, so he couldn’t have been a servant, anyway.
She looked again and saw that on one hand he wore a leather glove. She remembered Ewan saying something about a missing hand – that he had been injured in the war...
‘You’re Miss Denham?’ he said coldly, as he saw her looking at the glove.
‘Yes, and you must be Sir Michael?’
‘What do you want from me, Miss Denham?’
He was quite good looking. She thought that straight away, even though she was disposed to hate him. She also saw they looked like one another, for they had the same blue eyes, the same corn-coloured hair, the same straight noses, same long lashes, same slightly darker, arching brows.
But their mouths were different – his lips were thin and mean, while hers were full and generous, like Phoebe’s. While his was long and angular, she had Phoebe’s heart-shaped face.
‘I won’t pretend this visit is a pleasure,’ he added, when Daisy didn’t speak. ‘But you might as well sit down.’
So Daisy sat.
‘What do you want?’ Sir Michael asked again.
‘My father has had a summons,’ Daisy said. ‘I’d like you to revoke it, to let the matter drop.’
‘Why should I do that?’ Sir Michael’s thin lips twisted. ‘Those brats were trespassing, committing wilful damage on my land. They should be taught a lesson.’
‘Yes, but by their father, not by you,’ said Daisy, telling herself that she must keep her temper.
‘Denham never taught anyone a single thing worth knowing. It’s clear he can’t control his wretched children. So someone else will have to do it for him,’ said Sir Michael. ‘I’m afraid the summons stands.’
‘But my father hasn’t any money, and he can’t afford to pay a fine,’ objected Daisy.
‘Then of course the children will be birched, or sent to a reformatory where they will be taught respect for other people’s property.’
‘But they’re only kids!’ Daisy stood up and faced him, met his calm, superior blue stare. ‘Sir Michael, we admit it, they were walking in your woods. They found some animals caught in traps, and set them free. If they damaged any of your traps, I’m sure my father would be more than happy to replace them, or to pay for them to be repaired.’
‘I thought you said that Denham had no money?’
‘Oh, very well, I’ll pay myself, if you’ll withdraw the charges.’
‘Miss Denham, you don’t seem to understand. Your brothers are delinquents. They deserve a flogging, and I intend to see they get one.’
Daisy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Already half ashamed of herself for offering to pay to have the cruel traps repaired, she glared at him. ‘Then what they say about you in the village must be right,’ she muttered, as she turned to go.
‘What do they say, Miss Denham?’ asked Sir Michael, so calmly and sarcastically that Daisy was incensed.
‘That you’re a sadist and a coward,’ she replied, as she made her way towards the door.
She didn’t reach it. ‘No one speaks to me like that,’ Sir Michael told her coldly in a voice of steel and ice, as he placed himself between his visitor and the door.
‘Well, I just did,’ said Daisy.
‘Miss Denham, listen to me carefully.’ Sir Michael’s fine blue eyes flashed angry fire. ‘I have some standing in this county. I expect my inferiors to treat me with respect. I see your adoptive parents brought you up to be a hoyden, so perhaps it’s not your fault, but you won’t leave this room till you apologise.’
‘Then I’ll have to stay.’ Daisy sat down again, folded her arms across her chest and glowered up at him.
‘Miss Denham, please don’t be so obstinate.’ Michael Easton sighed. ‘I don’t know what else you might have heard about me, but – ’
‘Believe me, I’ve heard plenty!’ Daisy held up one hand and started ticking off a list. ‘Seducer, liar, criminal, arsonist – ’
‘Arsonist?’ A vein throbbed dangerously in Michael Easton’s temple. ‘Be careful,’ he said softly. ‘What you say is slander. You could end up in a court of law yourself.’
‘So you didn’t pay somebody to set our house on fire?’
‘Of course I didn’t.’ Michael Easton laughed. ‘Whoever told you that? I – ’
‘Why do you hate my parents?’ interrupted Daisy.
‘I don’t hate them.’
‘Yes, you do.’ Daisy met his stare. ‘You wanted to marry Mum, she wouldn’t have you, and you’ve never forgiven her for it, have you?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sir Michael said abruptly, but in a slightly less abrasive tone than he had used before. ‘You’re just an adolescent, with an adolescent’s foolish notions, and you wish – ’
‘I wish you’d leave my family alone! Just let us all get on with trying to make a sort of living.’ Daisy held his gaze, her own beseeching. ‘Please, can’t you forget about this summons? So, a couple of children go walking in your woods. They get upset when they find animals in traps. But how does that hurt you?’
‘Your family, Miss Denham?’ Sir Michael shook his head. ‘I know what the village gossips say and, looking at you today, I can see there is a kind of accidental likeness.’
Daisy didn’t want to think about it. ‘Whatever our relationship,’ she said, ‘supposed or proven, Alex Denham will always be my father.’ She looked back at him steadily, into clear blue eyes just like her own. ‘Please, Sir Michael, drop this court case. Let my father deal with my brothers?’
‘I’m so sorry, Daisy.’ Sir Michael spread his hands. ‘I have my property as well as my reputation as a sadist to defend, and so the answer’s no.’
But now he seemed prepared to let her leave, and so she walked out with her head held high.
‘What did he say?’ asked Stephen, when Daisy finally got back to the stables, hotter, dustier and so tired that she was almost walking in her sleep.
‘The summons stands. You’re right, he is a sadist, and he’s going to see you cop it.’ Daisy grimaced. ‘Well, I’ll get another job, then I can pay your fine.’
‘You will, Daze?’ Robert grinned. ‘You’re such a brick! We thought we’d go to Borstal.’
‘If Sir Michael’s friends with the presiding magistrate,’ said Daisy, yawning hugely, ‘you still might. I’m going back to the cottage now – are you two horrors coming?’
‘No, not yet, we have to put the animals to bed.’ Stephen smiled ruefully at Daisy, and ran his grubby fingers through his untidy mop of jet-black hair. ‘Thank you, Daze,’ he said.
‘Oh, don’t mention it.’ Daisy rubbed her eyes. ‘We’ll work something out, but now I’m going home to have a sleep. I’m tired, and it looks like rain.’
It wasn’t working out, and Ewan was getting tired of Sadie and Mungo always going on at him.
This Shakespeare studio business, it had been his brilliant plan, they grumbled, and they’d both gone along with it, merely to humour him.
But they weren’t getting anywhere with Scottish managements, idiots to a man who only wanted farces, comedies, or a Sir Harry Lauder kind of light variety – patriotic, sentimental sing-songs led by men in kilts.
‘So that’s what we should offer them?’ said Ewan. ‘Mungo, what’s your tartan, the Red Campbell? Do you have a sporran and twisted walking stick all of your own?’
This brought the wrath of God down on his head. ‘We should be doing modern drama,’ Sadie cried. ‘Our mission is to educate the workers, not pander to t
he lowest sort of taste!’
Yes, they’d done that season down in Leeds. They’d sold their souls to Satan for a while, and saved a bit of money, muttered Mungo. So now they should be spending it putting together a season of their own, doing theatre for the masses, in hospitals, in factories, in barracks – and in prisons, possibly.
Ewan could just imagine prison governors letting the likes of Sadie stand in front of hardened convicts, spouting left wing propaganda, as the men looked up her skirt.
‘We’ll need more funds, so why can’t you get some money from your mother?’ demanded Sadie, who had dragged information about his family out of Ewan, and now assumed he was a closet millionaire.
She refused to accept that Agnes Fraser had no money, or none to spare at any rate, and that if she had, she wouldn’t have used it to advance her son’s theatrical career.
Sadie couldn’t or wouldn’t understand that everything the Frasers owned was all tied up in land, that these days rents no more than covered costs, that there were numerous covenants and entails which meant they couldn’t sell this land and raise a bit of money, even if they wished.
‘You’re just a feudal remnant, Fraser,’ muttered Mungo, balefully.
‘You call yourself a socialist, but really you’re a traitor to the workers, aren’t you?’ added Sadie, crossly.
Ewan couldn’t be bothered to reply.
Sadie’s favourite hobby horse was all the senseless slaughter of the workers in the war, in which her father had been badly wounded, and most of his friends had died.
‘My father was in the war as well,’ said Ewan. ‘He was wounded too. But after they had patched him up, he went back to the trenches.’
‘Aye, but he was an officer,’ grinned Mungo, rubbing his worker’s hands upon his worker’s greasy corduroys. ‘Everybody knows they had it soft.’
‘No, they didn’t,’ insisted Ewan. ‘Officers got killed as well as men.’
‘It was a dirty capitalist war, and if all the workers had had their proper say, and understood what they were really being asked to do, they wouldnae have fought in it at all,’ retorted Mungo, smugly.
The Golden Chain Page 24