Daisy's Wars (11 page)

Daisy would laugh at her, but gradually she understood and her confidence in her eye grew stronger. She and her machine changed plain buttons for unusual ones, added matching colours to brighten
up the ordinary, and attached white collars to everything, because, as Joan said, that Chanel woman was absolutely right, there was no face so perfect that it couldn’t be improved by the
reflected glow from something white underneath.

The little machine had become her best companion out of working hours, but when Dessie had moved in all that came to an end. If he wasn’t going out to the pub he would stand behind her as
she worked, making her so conscious of his presence that she could feel his eyes and his breath on her; and if he was out drinking he could still come back at any moment and then loom behind her.
She knew he did it to make her feel uncomfortable; the other household doors were shut and might as well have been miles away. It was his way of establishing power over her, but she preferred to
give in rather than join in with his games, so the sewing machine was abandoned and she went back to sewing everything by hand when the household chores were done – even when he wasn’t
there. She had thought of sleeping in one of the cold, damp, unused bedrooms upstairs, though they had no beds, but the thought of him being so close at night put her off. Once he’d joined
Kay, Daisy was at a safer distance downstairs. Besides, what if he came in one night, blocking the doorway? She would be trapped.

So she decided to continue to sleep where her father had suggested on the couch near to the black-leaded kitchen range. That at least would provide some heat, and there were too many doors
leading off for Dessie to try anything.

Kay was no longer working at the ropeworks but lay about all day awaiting the birth of her child. When Daisy came home at night she would feel irritated that her sister seemed to be sitting in
the exact position as when she had left in the morning; then she remembered that Kay had always slept that way too and knew there was no point wasting energy getting angry about it. What she had to
do, she realised, was teach Kay to do the things ‘Background Daisy’ had been doing since birth, but with Kay’s expanding girth it wasn’t easy to make her into a housekeeper.
There were things she couldn’t do, like lifting Kathleen to change her sheets and her nightclothes, or carrying coal – though other pregnant women did so – but Daisy decided that
she could learn to cook.

Somehow it wasn’t a huge success, though, as Kay forgot the simplest tasks, like how to peel potatoes, from one day to the next, and had to be taught all over again. It was as if all her
learning ability had been devoted to music, leaving nothing to absorb other skills, and somehow she was incapable of clearing the now useless music out to make way for them. Still, Daisy
persevered. Kay had to learn these things, Daisy decided, she would need them: as though Daisy knew ‘Background Daisy’ might not always be there to do them for her. She didn’t
know where this notion came from or where it might lead, it was just a thought that was there in her head, and that for the time being she didn’t take any further.

As Kay waited, Daisy spent the time encouraging her sister and caring for her mother, worrying as the months passed that Kathleen had shrunk into herself more than ever and wondering if anyone
else had noticed. Years ago Michael had told her that her mother would not live to old age. The doctors had told him this long ago, and though Daisy knew this she had never really applied the
knowledge to the everyday reality of Kathleen being there, trying to breathe. It was how things had always been, so Michael’s words had taken on all the importance of his other tales, the
ones about ‘home’.

But back then Kathleen had something to live for – Kay’s future career – and now that it had vanished, Daisy sensed a change in her, a deeper low than she had known before. She
couldn’t discuss it with Michael as once she would have, because these days she avoided her father as much as she did her brother-in-law. She felt bad about it, not guilty, more deeply, sad,
but her years as Daddy’s Little Girl had disappeared when he had mentioned her ‘woman’s bits’. She didn’t know how all fathers should be, having only had one, but deep
down deep down she felt no father should have spoken to a daughter in those terms, and, on the occasions when they passed each other in the house in Guildford Place, she pulled her clothes around
her and crossed her arms to hide her body.

Being used to seeing life as a series of difficulties and problems, Daisy didn’t know she was going through a more hurtful form of what all daughters do with their fathers, that often
bitter parting of the ways when they change from adoring little girls to women. Michael wasn’t the first or the last to be thrown by his daughter’s developing sexual allure, all fathers
are acutely conscious of it and confused by it. He had already been faced that night with the sexual development of one daughter when he inflicted hurt on Daisy with his remark. She knew how other
men regarded her, but that she disgusted her father was too much for her to bear and from then on she withdrew from him.

When Daisy went into the bedroom to view the new arrival, Kay was sitting up holding her daughter, and Daisy took one look and burst into tears. Everyone was crying, of course, all the
disapproval of the shotgun wedding had disappeared with the arrival of the little girl. There was joy all around, but Daisy’s tears were different. She was crying because she knew everything
was finally over for Kay; poor, dim Kay who had the voice of an angel but would now be a brood mare instead. There was no doubt about it, her music, her fantastic and mesmerising talent, would
wither and die. It had indeed all been for nothing, and she felt such pity for her sister as she held the little black-haired child that it was a physical pain.

She took the new baby downstairs and put her in Kathleen’s arms, just as she herself had been taken to Granny Niamh.

‘Look, Mum,’ she whispered, ‘another Kathleen.’

As Kathleen looked down at her granddaughter she smiled and the child cried briefly.

‘Did you hear that?’ Daisy asked. ‘She even cries in tune! I think you’ve got another singer there!’

It was a desperate attempt to give her mother something more to live for, because the first one had faded to nothing and they both knew it. Kathleen nodded and wept quietly as she stared,
bright-eyed, at the baby, but there was an air of doom, a bitter foreboding that Daisy could almost taste.

Everything in her family had changed so quickly, she thought, and it wasn’t helped by the talk of war that was occupying the minds of everyone in the country, making for feelings of doubt
and fear. It was the end of May 1939, and it seemed nothing could stop the strange little Austrian with the funny moustache as his Forces tramped over Europe. Certainly not another strange little
man with a funny moustache waving a piece of paper in London, no matter how loudly the cheers of the listening crowd resounded. The people of Newcastle, as in other cities, were preparing for a war
no one wanted or had really believed would happen.

‘We’ve got an Anderson shelter going up in the back garden,’ Joan Johnstone announced one day. She exchanged a disapproving look with Daisy. ‘They say it will withstand
everything but a direct hit, so that’s comforting, isn’t it?’

Daisy smiled. ‘I suppose it depends on whether the Germans will be understanding and bomb from the sides,’ she said.

‘And that we don’t drown from the flooding. Why does no one mention that? They’re under ground-level, all the rain will get in.’ Joan shook her head. ‘And all my
flowers have gone,’ she continued. ‘George has planted vegetables instead. They say all the public parks will be ploughed up and used for vegetables soon, too.’

‘But do you really think it will happen?’ Daisy asked.

‘If it does we’ll all be sitting in three feet of water – eating carrots, by the look of things!’ Joan replied.

At the end of August, three months after the birth of baby Kathleen, a tearful Kay confessed to her sister that she was pregnant again. Mrs Young thought she was about two
months gone. That was what Daisy was for, sorting things out, making them all better.

‘I don’t want it,’ Kay whimpered, ‘I don’t even want the one I had. It hurt, Daisy, it hurt really bad. I was all torn, you know, down there.’

‘But Kay,’ Daisy said, ‘you knew it was too early, why didn’t you stop him?’

‘I don’t know how to stop Dessie,’ Kay wept. ‘He says I’m his wife, he can do what he wants. You don’t know what he’s like,’ she added
fearfully.

‘Don’t I?’ Daisy fumed. ‘Seems to me I’m the only one who knew what Dessie was like from the first time I set eyes on him, but nobody would listen.’

That Thursday night Daisy waited till Dessie came home from a night of drinking. He spent more time out of the house than in these days, not that she minded, but she never slept till he was
safely upstairs. She would lie on the couch in the darkness, her eyes closed, deliberately keeping her breathing slow and deep so that he would think she was asleep, but underneath the blankets she
was fully dressed, ready to run if he touched her. Sometimes he stood beside her for ages, and though she controlled her breathing she felt her heart thumping loudly and was afraid he might hear
it, too, and know she was still awake. The relief when he finally moved off and made his unsteady way upstairs was always so acute that she felt like crying, but this night she wanted to see him,
this night the lights were on and she was fully awake and angry.

He was singing under his breath as he came in, then she heard him curse as he bumped into the abandoned sewing machine in the hall before he made his way through the sitting room.

‘So you’ve made it back, have you?’ she asked.

He looked at her as she stood by the couch, her arms folded. ‘And what’s it to you?’ he challenged her. ‘Have you a rolling pin handy to hit me with there?’ He
laughed at his joke.

She didn’t answer him. ‘Kay says she’s expecting again.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said, sitting down and taking off his shoes. ‘Not with my bloody luck anyway.’

‘
Your
luck? What about Kay’s luck being stuck with a bastard like you? Sure, you know you shouldn’t have touched her for six weeks after the baby, no decent man would
have done what you’ve done.’

‘She’s my wife, I can do with her and to her what I want,’ he replied calmly.

‘Yes; she told me you’d said that. She’ll have two babies only nine months apart, do you understand that?’ Daisy said angrily.

‘So have many women,’ he grinned.

‘Only the ones married to bastards like you!’ she whispered fiercely.

‘Ah, shut up!’ Dessie said wearily, getting up and moving towards the stairs. ‘Your trouble is that you need someone to slap you around to make you think less of yourself,
Daisy Sheridan. You need to be taught less cheek and more respect.’

‘Respect for the likes of you? Don’t kid yourself, you’re the one who needs slapping around a bit, and if I were a man I’d do it, believe me!’

That was when she made her mistake. Thinking the conversation was over because there was no point talking to him when he’d had a few, thinking that because he’d headed for the stairs
he had actually climbed them, she turned her back to him and began making up her bed. Suddenly he grabbed her from behind again, but he didn’t make the same mistake as last time by leaving
his stomach exposed to her elbow. He caught her and threw her, face down, on the couch, then fell on top of her, knocking all the breath out of her lungs so that she suddenly realised that even if
she had wanted to, even if there was someone in the house who could help her, she couldn’t shout.

‘You know your trouble, Daisy?’ he whispered. ‘Your trouble, Daisy, is that you’re jealous of your stupid sister. You want what she has and plenty of it! Well, all you
had to do was ask.’

He felt under her, grabbed her wrists tightly and almost whipped her round onto her back. Then he caught both wrists in one hand above her head and started ripping at her clothes with the other.
She tried kicking him, but he knelt on her legs, then eased them apart with his knee. She would never have believed it was possible. How many times had she heard girls talking about men who forced
themselves on females? How many times had she said to herself that the girl
must’ve
cooperated, or else he couldn’t have done it, could he? They could’ve lashed out,
couldn’t they? Kicked him, scratched him, fought back by instinct? No man, she had always told herself, would dare think he could do such a thing to her.

Only she hadn’t reckoned for the shock, the paralysing thought going through her mind that he wouldn’t do this, not really, he couldn’t. If she just kept quiet and didn’t
provoke him any further, he would stop.

Then there were other thoughts as she felt him between her legs, pulling at the red silk pants with the lace edges that she had saved up to buy. Her father was working, her mother was in her
bedroom and upstairs her pregnant sister lay with the baby. Her mind was full of panic; she must get away from him without making any kind of noise that would attract attention, and as it was she
was afraid someone could already have overheard. If they came in and found her and Dessie entwined on the couch, they wouldn’t believe she hadn’t wanted this. That’s what he would
say, what he would have to say, so she had to keep as quiet as possible. If she did manage to shout out there would be chaos, the family reaction would be one of hysteria.

So go along with it, she told herself, and he’ll think of that, too, and he’ll stop. If he didn’t she could always roll him off her before he got any further.

Only she couldn’t. It was a position she had never been in before and she didn’t know the physical rules, whereas he did, and his weight was too heavy, too overpowering, and he knew
how to pin her down. She was gasping, taking in his stinking breath every time she inhaled, and she was trying to talk to him, trying to put together soothing words about his wife, his child. It
was all a mistake; she wouldn’t tell anybody, honest, Dessie. Right up to the last moment she thought he’d stop, till the sharp pain that made her call out, but Dessie was aware enough
of what he was doing to silence her by roughly putting his mouth over hers.