Daisy's Wars

Meg Henderson

Praise for Meg Henderson’s novels:

‘A hugely absorbing story. Henderson brings the horror and pain of wartime experiences vividly to life with vigorous humour, commonsense wisdom and vitality.’

Observer

‘A novel full of the rich detail of domestic lives, told with humour and sharpness.’

Scotland on Sunday

‘Henderson writes from a position of uncompromising humanity. A strong, atmospheric writer with gifts of insight, she has a sharp and tarry black humour, so while she
attacks the objects of her wrath, she leavens the battle with a running current of dark and infectious wit.’

Glasgow Sunday Herald

Also by Meg Henderson

THE HOLY CITY

BLOODY MARY

CHASING ANGELS

THE LAST WANDERER

SECOND SIGHT

A SCENT OF BLUEBELLS

This ebook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 2005 by HarperCollins
Publishers

Copyright © Meg Henderson 2005 and 2012

The moral right of Meg Henderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-194-1

Version 1.0

MEG HENDERSON

D
AISY’S
W
ARS

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

Acknowledgements

Sources

1

If there was one thing wireless operator Daisy Sheridan had learned it was never relax in the tower. You sat there as the boys went off, cheered on by every female on the base;
looking forward to the end of your shift and hoping that by then all the boys would have made it back safely, though you knew they wouldn’t. But even when losses were confirmed and the
stragglers rolled in, if you were smart some instinct kept you alert. Now here it was, the unexpected, as sure as eggs is eggs.

‘Daisy, I’m not going to make it back,’ the voice said. ‘The old kite’s in bits, the crew are dead and I’ve taken one in the head. Something wrong with my
eyes, can’t see much, and my chute’s useless.’

‘Oh, here we go,’ she replied tartly, ‘another one trying for the sympathy vote.’

The boy at the other end of the line laughed quietly. ‘Have I got it?’ he asked. ‘The sympathy vote, I mean?’

From the moment the boy’s voice had come over the radio Daisy was aware that the atmosphere in the Langar tower had suddenly become still and silent as the others listened to the
conversation, willing him to make it home. It was always like that, on a wing and a prayer, as they said.

‘No, you haven’t!’ she said archly into her mike. ‘Do you think you’re the first Fly Boy who’s tried that line on me, sunshine?’

He laughed quietly again. ‘Daisy, will you write to my mother?’ he asked.

‘You really are determined to carry on with this, aren’t you?’ she sighed. ‘What makes you think I write to mothers anyway, sunshine?’

‘We all know that you do, Daisy,’ he said softly. ‘Promise me? Tell her I was a good, clean-living boy!’

‘Now I
know
this is a joke!’ Daisy snorted. ‘Stop fooling around and get back here. We’ve got you, we can see you. Just put less effort into trying to chat me up
and more into flying and you’ll make it.’

There was no reply for a moment, save a crackling on the line. ‘If I do make it back,’ he said eventually, ‘will you marry me, Daisy?’

‘Now we’ve got to it!’ she said sceptically. ‘Are you a millionaire by any chance?’

‘How did you guess?’ the boy laughed. ‘You know I wouldn’t have dared ask if I hadn’t been!’

‘Then of course I’ll marry you. So get your arse back here in one piece,’ Daisy replied, ‘and no excuses, I’ve got witnesses.’

‘Daisy?’

‘Yes, fiancé of mine?’

‘Talk to me.’

‘And what do you think I’ve been doing?’ she demanded. ‘I have pilots out there in
real
trouble to deal with and I’m on the line to a chancer like you.
I’ll be on a charge over this, y’know! And another thing, it would be polite to discuss the ring now that we’re betrothed, don’t you think? Will it be a nice, big, flashy
family heirloom?’

For a moment the line crackled again as she listened to the sound of breathing, the noise of a sick engine in the background, then nothing. For a long moment there was silence, then Daisy felt a
collective sigh as the entire tower let out the breath it had been holding. Another one gone, another boy lost, and he hadn’t been that far away either. Almost imperceptibly Daisy lowered her
head for an instant to steady herself. ‘Any chance of a brew?’ she asked calmly, already turning to the next call.

The Control Officer bent over her and said quietly into her ear, ‘I wouldn’t log that last one,’ and Daisy nodded wordlessly without looking up. Everyone knew that eyebrows
were raised from time to time over her conversations with pilots in trouble as they tried desperately to make it home after a raid. The rule was that only official jargon should be used and every
word had to be logged, but everyone also knew that Daisy handled situations like this with ease, effortlessly performed several tasks at once, was never out of her depth and didn’t blub
– who could ask for more? That’s what they said, anyway, she knew that, Daisy always coped – in an unmilitary manner it was true, but she coped. The stragglers were still coming
home from the raid, those who would come home that was, and the names of those who wouldn’t were already being wiped off the blackboard, though you never really gave up hope till you had
to.

Without looking up, Daisy wondered which of the names being wiped off at that moment was his and what kind of chap the boy had been. Her mind was already turning to the letter she would send to
his mother telling her what a good, clean-living boy he had been, how they had all loved him and would miss him terribly. Then she tossed her head slightly and went back to work.

At the end of the shift the other WAAFs waited for her.

‘You go on,’ she said, ‘you’ll be lighting up gaspers as usual and I prefer clean air, thanks.’ Every time she said something of the sort she was taken back to her
childhood and living with a mother who had had to fight for every breath she took, turning anyone with a lit cigarette or pipe into an enemy. Her mother was gone now too, but Daisy still hated
tobacco smoke. It made her cough for her mother’s sake, she always thought, rather than her own.

She quickly turned her thoughts away. She didn’t want to think about Kathleen, she just wanted some space so that the sound of the boy’s voice would leave her mind, but she had
thought in the wrong direction if she was looking for a diversion. She left the tower to walk alone in the cool morning air, smiling to herself as she wondered why the others didn’t ask her
how the smell of aircraft fuel and burning didn’t offend her ‘clean air’ demands – burning flesh too, often enough.

She gave another shake of the head. ‘Daisy Sheridan copes!’ she told herself quietly. ‘Behave yourself, girl!’

She did cope, it was true, but sometimes she needed a little time alone to file the latest incident in her mind, to commit it to where thoughts of her mother already lay, in the care of
‘the real Daisy Sheridan’, rather than the one people saw, the one she seemed to be on the outside. They were all there, the people and events she didn’t want to think about, at
some time or other, like ghosts inhabiting her mind, all being cared for by ‘the real Daisy Sheridan’ until she had time to deal with them properly. During this long war there were so
many ghosts that she often wondered if there would be enough time left in her life when the fighting was over to think about them properly.

‘When the war is over’ – that was what everyone said. They had said it so long already that it had lost its meaning; nobody could really look ahead and visualise a war-free
time. For five bleak years everyone with someone in the Forces, and that meant almost every family in the entire country, lived in dread of receiving a telegram from the War Office that started
‘
I regret to inform you
 …’.

The war had become a habit, that was the truth. There were children who had been born and gone to school knowing nothing but drabness, rationing and fear, knowing their fathers through photos
and tales told by mothers who had no way of telling if they might ever see them in the flesh. Funny to think she had ever been a child like that herself, and not too many years ago either; but, on
the other hand, she had never really been a child like that, when she came to think of it. Neither of the Sheridan girls could ever be described as like other children.

When she thought of Kay a picture came into her mind of her older sister on the stage in one of Newcastle’s Hibernian clubs. It wasn’t her first memory, but it was the one seared
into her brain, probably because it was so perfect. Daisy had been about seven years old, so Kay must have been about nine, her delicate, heart-shaped face with the big, bright blue eyes framed by
her hair, a cascade of dark red waves that ended at her waist, a child of truly exquisite beauty. As Kay stood, her small feet slightly hen-toed, on the worn wood of the floorboards, bathed in a
single cheap spotlight, the colour of her eyes had been intensified by a puff-sleeved dress in a satiny, shiny material of the same vivid blue. The colour complemented her colouring perfectly and
the dress was strewn with sequins that shone like diamonds, sequins her mother and Daisy had sewn on by hand. To complete the false glamour that was Little Kay Sheridan, a big matching bow held her
hair back from her face as she sang of emotions she didn’t understand and probably never would. ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’, she had sung that night, always her big
closing number, their father Michael’s favourite song in honour of their mother, Kathleen – and judging by the Irish Geordie audience, a favourite of theirs too. Kay sang to them in her
clear, strong voice, evoking nostalgic thoughts and memories of Ireland, the country where they still felt they belonged, and she sang with such feeling that tears always ran down the cheeks of
people who were three or four generations removed from Ireland, but still regarded the green, green land across the sea as ‘home’.

In the corner of the stage, Kathleen Sheridan sat on a shaky wooden chair, her eyes gleaming, her cheeks two bright red circles as her lips silently moved in time with her daughter’s, her
face reflecting the feelings on Kay’s innocent face in this well-rehearsed routine.

Even then, though she was two years younger than Kay, Daisy had been amazed at how easily the audience had been fooled by what sounded like emotion in her sister’s voice. She was a great
turn in the Irish clubs, Little Kay Sheridan, just as her mother had been before her, but one day Little Kay would be a great star. That’s what everyone said, wiping their tears away after
Kathleen had been safely taken home once more, and not least because of her wonderful voice. They loved to cry, that’s what Daisy had learned. People liked nothing more than sentiment, real
or imaginary, it didn’t seem to matter, especially to the Irish, but then she had already half-understood that. They had never been welcome in Newcastle: even those born and bred in the city
were regarded as foreigners. Having an Irish name was a handicap that made sure you didn’t belong in what was, what had become, your own home in your own country, the only one you’d
ever known.

The Sheridans had fared no worse than others, better than many, but they were still Irish and that meant Catholic and Fenian. You carried it with you like an ugly scar, so that you were only
really at ease among similarly disfigured people. That scar was what held the exiled Irish together.

‘Your great-grandfather Bernard was just a boy from a poor farming family,’ Daisy’s father would tell his own. ‘He had to leave a home in a beautiful land where he was
loved and come to a hostile place like this just to stay alive.’