A Better World than This (28 page)

God bless you, my darling. And write soon.

All my love,

Daisybell

(No one but you has ever said my name in quite that way.)

Dear Daisybell,

I am answering your letter straight away. I am sorry that Jimmy has been off colour, but he has great powers of resistance, young Jimmy, and he seems to be enjoying playing the invalid! No, I am not going to panic. I trust you completely and know you will always tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

I think you know that I would come up at once if you told me you thought it necessary.

I went round to tell Aileen. I thought she ought to know about Jimmy being ill and that he was in good hands, but the house was closed up. I saw the next-door neighbour, but she couldn’t tell me where Aileen has gone. She
did
tell me that Dorothy was just getting over a fever. I wonder if she meant scarlet fever? Trust Aileen not to let me know.

Give young Jimmy my love, and tell him I’ll send him a book. On second thoughts I’ll enclose a postal order and perhaps you can get one and tell him it’s from me.

I agree with you about the need to be circumspect. My wife is the guilty party after all and I’m damned if I’ll spend a night in a Brighton hotel with a tart just to provide her with the evidence. Let her work a few things out for herself.

I told her, of course, that Jimmy is staying with friends of mine. At a boarding-house by the sea, I said. Joshua, Bobbie, Florence and Daisy. She said she didn’t know I
had
any friends! It’s funny the way things turn out, isn’t it?

What more can I say about you keeping him like that? I might tell you I was at my wits’ end. I even think I prayed a little, and when I prayed yours was the face I saw. You have given me the chance to make something of my life. I made a mess of my last set of questions and no wonder.

Very dear Daisybell. Goodnight. Take the greatest care of your good self. You are unique. I think God threw away the mould when He made you.

Yours ever,

Sam

He had forgotten to enclose the postal order, but Daisy knew he would remember next time. She would buy the book herself and tell him it was from Sam. The first thing to do was to run upstairs and tell Jimmy that his dad had written to them.

Jimmy was sitting up in bed reading a comic. He looked washed-out and seemed to have lost weight from his face and neck, making him appear younger and more baby-like.

‘I don’t want a book,’ he told Daisy. ‘I want a Meccano set. The O outfit is only three shillings. My dad said I could have it. This week,’ he added, narrowing his eyes in the hope that Daisy wouldn’t guess he was lying. ‘I bet he’d let me have the Number Ten set. That one makes cranes what really work.’ The eyes almost disappeared in his attempt at sincerity. ‘My dad said he’d buy me a watch from Woolworth’s. I bet he’d buy me a bicycle with a three-speed if I asked him. I don’t want a rotten book. I
hate
books,’ he continued in the same
low
monotone, grumbling in earnest as Daisy smoothed his undersheet and plumped his pillows up. ‘Sissies read books.’

Daisy’s silence was making him mad. She always stayed quiet when he made one of his fusses. Not like his mother who would have yelled at him to stop moaning and asking for things he knew he couldn’t have.

He tried again. ‘I want a train set,’ he whined, ‘with wagons and coaches, and a Flying Scotsman that reverses when you wind it up. I’ve seen them in books.’

‘I thought you never read books.’

Daisy was smiling at him, not cross at all. Jimmy knew with a sickly certainty that if she ruffled his hair he would bite her. He closed his eyes.

‘I bit Montague,’ he said faintly.

‘Whereabouts?’ Daisy was still smiling.

‘On his ear.’

‘Did it bleed?’

‘Ears haven’t got much blood in them, especially kittens’ ears.’

‘Fancy you knowing that!’ Daisy marvelled.

‘What’s a
fancy-piece
, Daisy?’

There! He’d got her now. Jimmy held his breath. He had known it was a pretty bad word by the way his dad had reacted that morning when his mother had screamed it at him at the top of her voice.

‘Well, if
you
can’t look after him, why not take him to your fancy-piece?’ she had shouted, her face going white the way it always did when she was in one of her tempers. ‘Oh, yes, I know all about you taking her to the seaside in the Rolls. I even know her name – Daisy. Oh, my God! You didn’t expect the kids to keep quiet about
that
, did you?’ Then she had said something about never going out in the Rolls herself, not
once
. And yet his dad had given his
fancy-piece
a ride in it. That had really got her going. Jimmy had thought his dad was going to hit her. He remembered the cold feeling of fear in the pit of his stomach.

‘My mum said you’re a fancy-piece,’ he said, miserable
with
the hurting memory of the ugly scene.

Daisy felt sick. She could have been sick right then and there. Holding a hand to her mouth, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door and leaned over the wash basin, feeling the bile rise and burn her throat.

To hear a child say a thing like that! To know it must have been said in his hearing. Oh, dear God, how stupid could a person be?
Of course
those two children would have gone back and talked about her. About the ride in the Rolls, about the meal in a restaurant, and possibly about Martha dying in her deckchair, though what Sam’s wife would have made of that she couldn’t imagine. And yet in Sam’s letter he had said. …

The letter was in Daisy’s apron pocket, so she took it out and read it again. Friends, he had told his wife. Friends who ran a boarding-house by the sea. Joshua, Bobbie, Florence and Daisy. Unwittingly, in her letter to Sam she had verified that.

Daisy put the letter back in her pocket, her mind a turmoil of worry and apprehension. Oh, dear God, she wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing. Respectability meant too much to her. Be honest now. Respectability meant
everything
to her. Take that away and you might as well strip her stark naked and stand her at the top of the Town Hall steps!

She splashed her face with cold water. Her mother had been right. Going out with a married man brought trouble, real trouble, especially if a wife was looking for evidence of her husband’s infidelity with another woman. Fear, ignorance and guilt fought for supremacy. Why, oh why couldn’t love be like it was in the films? Holding hands in candle-lit restaurants, running along deserted beaches, leaning over the rail of an ocean liner – a pure unsullied heroine gazing into the eyes of the man she loves. And coming to a bad end if he happened to be married.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, before I fell in love with you?’ Claudette Colbert in
Zaza
, stalking her boudoir in anguish in a frilly loose gown over her nightie, with her married lover (Herbert Marshall) frowning elegantly in the background.
‘What
is to become of
me
, now?’ Claudette had cried, not a hair of her fringe out of place.

Daisy looked at herself in the mirror over the washbowl. Putting up a hand she touched her own straight fringe and winced.

Since moving into the house there hadn’t been the time or the inclination to bother with curlers. She wasn’t even sure where they were. Daisy forced herself to look hard at her celery-straight hair. The grey buttoned-up cardigan she wore looked as if it had been knitted on poker needles by a very old lady with trembling fingers, and the pom-poms on her down-at-heel slippers resembled a couple of cremated ferrets.

This unlovely apparition a breaker-up of marriages? The object of a married man’s unbridled passion? A
fancy-piece
?

When she went back into Jimmy’s room she was outwardly composed. Sitting down on the bed she spoke quietly.

‘Jimmy? I want you to listen to me. Carefully. That wasn’t a nice word you used just now. You must never say it about me again.’

‘What word?’ Jimmy was reading a six year-old
Film Annual
, totally engrossed in pictures of Lupino Lane being chased by a shock-headed lion. ‘I think I’m ready for a drink of lemonade.’

‘
Fancy-piece
. It’s a very bad word.’

‘As bad as bum?’

‘Worse.’ Daisy took the book from him. ‘So I want you to promise you’ll never say it again.’

‘I might forget.’ His eyes were calculating slits in his small white face.

‘Then until you promise I’ll take this with me.’ Daisy stood up and closed the
Annual
. She walked to the door, taking it with her.

‘You’re a fancy-piece!’

‘Right!’ Daisy had had more than enough. Taking off a slipper and flexing the sole she marched back to the bed.
‘Over
!’ she ordered, ignoring the howls of protest.

She had never had the slightest intention of hurting him – a bedroom slipper, she knew, produced the maximum noise with no damage at all, but if she had hammered red-hot nails into Jimmy’s behind he couldn’t have screamed any louder.

Within seconds three faces were framed in the doorway. Florence disbelieving, Joshua trying not to laugh and Mr Leadbetter looking as affronted as if Daisy had just been caught swinging a day-old baby round by the heels and bashing its head against a wall.

‘He asked for it!’ Red-faced but certainly not breathless from her exertions, Daisy faced them. ‘He’s been using foul language and he’s not too ill to be punished.’

‘What did you say bad enough to deserve that, lad?’ Mr Leadbetter glared at Daisy.

Jimmy’s tears stopped as suddenly as if a tap had been inserted in the side of his head and turned off. Upending himself, he allowed a left-over sob to creep up into his throat.

‘I called her,’ he said, eyeing Daisy with a new awareness she had never seen in his eyes before. For a full minute their eyes held hard. ‘I called her. …’ Jimmy said, while Daisy held her breath. ‘I called her a bum,’ he whispered at last.

‘Oh, Jimmy. …’ When Daisy held out her arms he hurled himself into them and as she held him close Daisy knew she had won some kind of a battle.

But the most important thing was that Jimmy knew it, too.

Dear Sam,

I made up my mind not to tell you how disappointed I was when your plans for coming up this weekend fell through, and here I am telling you in the very first line of this letter! Still, Easter isn’t very far away, and though I’ll be run off my feet – four lots of visitors up to now – you’ll be able to take Jimmy out to enjoy himself. Blackpool is coming to life already. The season seems to start earlier each year according to Mrs Mac and that’s in spite of so many folks being out of work. They come for short breaks now that the charas and the trains run special rates. We Northerners have always set great store by our holidays. We work hard and play hard and though we won’t
waste
money we’re not afraid to spend what we’ve got.

Jimmy is getting used to school, and goes off
unwashed
if he can get away with it! Florence caught him wetting his toothbrush under the tap and spitting vigorously in the washbowl one morning, and how he can have a bath without washing his neck beats me, but he won’t allow us in the bathroom with him. Sometimes I suspect he just fills the bath, swishes the water round with his hands, then lets it out again, but you know how innocent he can look even when he’s just emerged after a twenty-minute soak looking like a miner straight from a pit. Mr Penny (Joshua) made me laugh the other day. He has a really dry wit when you get to know him better. Jimmy refused to stop sliding
down
the banister, so Joshua said: ‘Don’t try reasoning with him. Just remember you’re a lot bigger than him!’ It did put things into perspective, I admit.

The house is looking so nice. Florence chose lovely friezes for the dining room and lounge – lightning flashes in orange and electric blue – they really brighten up the walls, which have come out a bit paler than I expected. Everything seems to have cost more than I budgeted for. I replaced all the flock mattresses with Vi-springs, and the worn blankets with soft fleecy. They were half a crown each! No wonder I have to run past the bank in case the manager sees me!

Sorry about all the boring domestic details, but my head is filled with them these days. Will the house be finished in time? Did Mr Leadbetter mean it when he said his workmen will be here for the next two years, give or take the odd Bank Holiday? There are days when I’m sure they’ll still be here when Jimmy has gone into long trousers!

Dear Sam, it’s past midnight and everyone in the house is in bed but me. I am sitting in the kitchen with wood shavings littering the floor and a pile of sand by the door. Mr L. and his merry men have been finishing off the downstairs toilet. They were here until six o’clock and they’re coming tomorrow – Sunday. Do I mean today? The days seem to be blurring into one session of hammering, with men all over the house drinking gallons of tea laced with pounds of sugar. All on double pay, as it’s the weekend. Oh, help!

I hope there’s a letter from you in the post, but I understand how busy you are with your final exams looming. Take care and God bless.

Yours,

Daisy

SLOWLY, DAISY CLIMBED
the stairs to the top floor. When the visitors began arriving Jimmy would have to give up his
room
and move in with her. She would put a camp bed up for him. It was either that or having to share with Florence, and Daisy knew which she preferred. Privacy and modesty was an obsession with Florence. She undressed beneath the brown dressing-gown. ‘As if the sight of an inch of your bare flesh would send strong men wild,’ Daisy had once teased, but Florence hadn’t smiled.

‘I could hear Bobbie turning over in bed!’ she complained. ‘So he must be able to hear me.’

‘Probably kneels up on his bed with his ear to the wall, his tongue hanging out as he listens eagerly for the snap of your knicker elastic,’ Daisy had said, only to be reminded that she could be very vulgar at times.

‘Honest vulgarity,’ Daisy muttered, as she undressed quickly. ‘Most Lancashire folk have a bit of that in them. Hardly offensive, surely?’