A Better World than This (37 page)

Lancashire hotpot was the dish Daisy had chosen to cook and make her visitors feel thoroughly at home on their first evening. Florence had watched her prepare it that morning with sheep’s kidney and thick neck chops – two per person – lashings of onions, minced and layered with sliced potatoes.

‘A good stock with plenty of body in it,’ Daisy had said, just as if she was giving a cookery demonstration for beginners. ‘Poured over like this and cooked very slowly for at least three hours.’

Before she’d gone out with the flarchy rotter and his son she had given Florence strict instructions about the time the brown dish had to go in the oven, giving herself plenty of time when they came back, she explained, to remove the lid and brown the top layer of scalloped potatoes, crisping them at the edges to add colour and what Daisy called ‘eye appeal’.

After all these weeks of preparation for the first Easter visitors it was almost inconceivable that Daisy would go gallivanting on the very day. Yet off she’d tootled, all starry-eyed, twiddling her fingers at Florence in an airy ta-ra. She was besotted. Out of her mind, off her chump, and all for a man who wouldn’t recognize the truth for what it was if it stared him full in his handsome face.

Florence picked up a fork and prodded away at a large bowl of red pickled cabbage. Thank God Daisy hadn’t left any instructions about
that
. Evenly shredded, glistening with vinegar, it looked in a blessed state of readiness. Not like the Prince of Wales pudding she’d had steaming away for ages in its basin covered with double-thickness greaseproof paper. Twice at least she’d topped up the water from a boiling kettle in a fever of anxiety in case the pan boiled dry. They were going to have marmalade sauce with it, as a change from custard, but Florence was damned if she was going to try to make it.

The time she had been allowed to make the gravy – and ended up carrying it out to the bin wrapped in newspaper like a parcel – had convinced her that it wasn’t true anyone could do anything just as long as they put their mind to it. Concentrating as hard as a chess player within sight of winning the world championship wasn’t going to turn Miss F. Livesey into a cook.

‘Our Florence is the only girl I know who can make a lumpy cup of tea,’ her father had once joked.
Had
her father ever joked? He must have, Florence supposed. She lifted the heavy kettle to give the Prince of Wales pudding water yet another top-up.

‘Jimmy! Have you seen Jimmy?’

Breathless from her headlong dash, heedless of the Accrington couple sitting stunned into silence before Auntie Edna’s continuing saga, Daisy burst into the kitchen. Causing Florence to jump as if she’d been suddenly shot in the back, bang the kettle down on its gas jet, scorch the wide cuff of her knitted jumper and, missing the edge of the stove, tip up the kettle sending a cascade of boiling water down over her feet.

Opening her mouth wide, Florence yelped like a wounded dog.

‘Carron oil!’ Edna said, coming into the kitchen to see what all the noise was about. ‘Poured on straight from the bottle.’

‘A clean pillow-case wrapped round to keep out the air,’ Mrs Mac said, following Daisy into the house to see why she’d been dashing about the street like a bee in a bottle when she should be putting the finishing touches to her visitors’ first meal.

‘Get her stockings off!’ Uncle Arnold gently pushed Florence down into a chair, knelt on the floor and decently averted his eyes as Daisy unfastened Florence’s suspenders. ‘I’ll try not to hurt you, lass,’ he said, tugging with his large clumsy hands at the lisle stockings in Florence’s favourite gun-metal shade.

And at the same time peeling clean away the skin from Florence’s long thin bony feet.

Jimmy was relieved to find that when the man shrouded in mist at the end of the jetty swung round it turned out to be Joshua. Safe, nice Joshua, with his empty pipe clutched between his teeth.

Yes, he was quite by himself, he lied. Daisy and his dad had gone off and left him, so he thought he would just walk along the pier and climb down on to the jetty. Maybe have a bit of a fish. He took a length of string from a sagging pocket and began to unroll it.

Joshua could tell that Jimmy had been crying. There were the tell-tale dirty smudges round his eyes where he’d rubbed at them with grubby fists. A left-over sob crept up and trembled Jimmy’s lower lip as he busied himself picking at a knot in the string.

‘A bloody knot,’ he muttered.

Joshua ignored the swear-word. ‘Best be getting back to the house, old son,’ he said. ‘I doubt if the fish will be biting today. Too foggy.’

‘Fish don’t bother about fog.’ Jimmy’s voice was scathing, but he obediently rolled the string back into its little ball and shoved it deep into his pocket.

‘Did you go on the Pleasure Beach?’ Joshua waited patiently for Jimmy to fall into step beside him.

‘No.’

‘Really? I was sure you told me you were going on the Pleasure Beach with Daisy and your dad. Wasn’t it the Giant Plunger you were going to try first?’

‘No. That’s kid’s stuff. Dead boring that Giant Plunger. It doesn’t go fast enough for me.’

‘I see.’ Joshua was a man schooled in patience. ‘So the three of you went for a walk instead?’

‘No.’

‘Is no the only word you can say?’

‘No.’

Joshua put his hand inside his pocket and brought out a wrapped sweet. ‘Would you like a caramel? A banana split?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?’

A sigh, seemingly dredged up from Jimmy’s trailing shoelaces. ‘Yes please, Joshua.’

‘That’s better.’

Joshua handed over the toffee and they trudged on in silence.

The worst thing to do when questioning a difficult child was to let exasperation show. Joshua’s years of training and experience had taught him that truth. Shake a child, or
demand
an answer and they clammed up tighter than a miser’s purse. He glanced down at the small disconsolate figure plodding along by his side. Jimmy would tell him in his own good time. But where were Daisy and her Sam? Searching frantically for this young whipper-snapper, Joshua would take a bet on that.

They walked past the place where Sam had shouted angrily at Daisy, gripping her arm and twisting her round to glare at her. Jimmy averted his face. He bet anything if his dad had hit Daisy he would be sorry. He bet Daisy was good at thumping people when she got really mad.

Joshua phrased his question casually, as if it didn’t really matter one way or another. ‘Did you come on the pier all by yourself, old son?’

A trickle of yellow saliva oozed from a corner of Jimmy’s mouth. ‘Oh, yes,’ he fibbed, ‘I come on here most days. After school.’

‘Better get you home,’ Joshua said, knowing when even he was beaten.

The couple from Accrington said afterwards that it was better than a front row seat at the pictures. First the poor lass with the scalded feet was given a drink of brandy out of a cup. Then a tall dark man had rushed through the open door, yelling for someone called Jimmy. He had dashed upstairs, stamped along the landing, flung doors open. In a right state. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that!

Then
, another man had walked into the hall holding a little lad by the hand. A little lad with a mucky face who looked as if he’d been crying. Jimmy? Yes, obviously the same, because the girl who had dashed past the lounge in her hat and coat just before the accident, came into the hall and went down on her knees to hug the little lad.

‘Jimmy! Oh, thank God you’re safe! We were so
worried
about you.’

‘Jimmy! You young devil!’ This was the first man, the younger one with the film-star looks, flying back down the stairs to put a stop to the hugging and kissing by walloping the little lad hard on his backside.

There was such a commotion the ambulance man at the door, followed by his mate carrying a stretcher and a red blanket, had to knock three times before he could be heard.

‘This is the patient?’ Advancing on the little lad, who proved he wasn’t by running upstairs screaming blue murder, followed by the good-looking man who they could see now must be the father.

The Accrington couple stood in the doorway to the lounge watching with reverence as Miss Livesey was carried past, lying prone on the stretcher with her eyes closed and her face as white as a sheet.

‘I’ll go with her, Daisy,’ the second man whispered to the
girl
in the hat and coat. ‘She’ll be all right.’

Which should have been the end of the interesting drama. But no. The peculiar woman with the daughter called Betty Blesser suddenly let out a piercing scream before rushing into the kitchen. To emerge triumphant and announce that in the nick of time she had saved the Prince of Wales from drying up!

No wonder nobody took the slightest notice of the policeman banging the iron knocker against the front door.

‘A Mr Schofield live here? A Mr Robert Schofield?’

The fat woman in the flowered cross-over pinny from next door came to first. ‘Mr Schofield goes dancing every afternoon in the Tower Ballroom with Reginald Dixon on the organ.’

The policeman coughed apologetically. ‘I have a warrant to search his room. If I may be shown. …’

‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Officer.’

The hat-and-coat girl stepped forward and almost pushed them back into the lounge. She closed the door.

‘I’m Miss Bell. Your landlady. Welcome to Shangri-La. I’m sorry about the little upset, but your meal won’t be long. You’ve seen your room? Good. I know you’re going to enjoy your stay with us. Please sit down and make yourselves comfortable.’

‘Well! I’ve seen nowt as funny as that lot since your mother got her beads caught in the mangle and nearly throttled herself.’ The man from Accrington nudged his wife and winked. ‘I reckon we’ve come to a madhouse, love. If Boris Karloff came through that door with a dirty great bolt through his neck I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.’

‘It wasn’t me mother’s beads got caught in the mangle. It was her scarf, and I never thought it was funny then and I don’t think it’s funny now.’

‘Aw heck.’ Her husband sat down on the settee. ‘Come on, lass. Smile and give your face a treat. We’re on our holidays, think on.’

STANDING JUST INSIDE
the door of Bobbie’s room, her unruffled expression betraying nothing of the turmoil raging away inside her, Daisy closed her ears to the sound of pan lids clattering as Edna reigned in triumphant control down in the kitchen.

She would keep calm, she would cope, and the lump in her throat wasn’t the onset of hysteria. Daisy Bell wasn’t the type to roll on the floor with the screaming ab-dabs anyway.

But surely Bobbie Schofield with his matching ties and hankies couldn’t be the notorious flasher of Talbot Square? Flashers wore dirty raincoats, not double-breasted camel-hair, with the belt knotted instead of threaded through the buckle. Besides, if Bobbie was the flasher, why was the policeman searching his drawers so diligently, rooting amongst the neatly rolled socks and folded cravats? Daisy wouldn’t have thought that
equipment
was necessary. She felt her cheeks grow warm.

Sam had come downstairs to see what all the noise was about. He was very sorry that Daisy was having such problems, especially on her first day on the job, as it were. He wished he hadn’t to go back the next morning, especially so early, but at least he was taking Jimmy with him, which would help.

Mrs Mac had gone back reluctantly to get on with her own cooking. She predicted that Florence would be laid up for at least a month, as scalds were always worse than burns. She
might
never walk again, of course. It was best to take things a day at a time.

The policeman had rolling eyes like Peter Lorre. Daisy wondered for a moment if he could be doing an impromptu imitation of the film star.

‘That trunk, Miss Bell. Do you happen to know where your Mr S. keeps the key?’

No, she said, she didn’t know. She respected her boarders’ privacy. She blushed again, remembering the times she had lifted the padlock and wondered what on earth the shabby tin trunk could have inside.

Without warning, the policeman sidled towards the dressing-table and opened a round leather collar-stud box. With a buttery smile he held a key aloft.

‘Always in the most obvious place, Miss Bell. Nothing surprises me any more. This will be the one, you will see.’ His voice deepened, throbbing with melancholy as he lifted the lid. ‘Aladdin’s treasure. Come and see for yourself, Miss Bell. The loot of a typical kleptomaniac. One with an obsessive impulse to steal,’ he explained, as if he suspected Daisy had never heard the word before. ‘We’ve been getting reports about him for a long time now. The gift shops and Woolworth’s have been his stamping ground in the winter, but come the summer he starts on the bazaars and stalls on the front.’ He held up a cigarette lighter. ‘This isn’t new.’ He flicked it into action. ‘
This
kind of thing he takes from houses, breaking in when the owners are in their beds. Never risking the upstairs rooms where the jewellery might be, or where he might find spare cash lying around on dressing-tables.’ He held up a miniature heart-shaped photo-frame. ‘Hasn’t even bothered to take the photograph out. That’s typical, too.’

‘But these things aren’t worth the pinching!’ Daisy stared down in amazement at the motley collection of trinkets: hair-slides fastened to display cards, two or three sets of bicycle clips, glittering Woolworth’s brooches, tie-pins, boxes of paper-clips, tiny bottles of April Violet scent, a sixpenny tin of Milk of Magnesia tablets, pocket cases of
Mannikin
cigars, tins of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, sixpenny boxes of Pond’s face powder, threepenny sachets of Amami wet or dry shampoo, and at least a dozen packets of Foster Clark’s Cream Custard neatly bound together with rubber bands.

‘He prefers evaporated milk to custard,’ she said, stunned.

The policeman rubbed his hands together. ‘Got him at last,’ he enthused. As if, Daisy thought, he’d caught Jack the Ripper, or that doctor over at Lancaster who’d killed his wife and chopped her up into little pieces.