Daisy's Wars (8 page)

Daisy stared at her, transfixed. ‘And you never married?’ she asked before she could stop herself.

‘Daisy!’ Mrs Johnstone said quietly.

‘No, no, Joan,’ Mrs Armstrong said, ‘I really don’t mind.’ She turned towards Daisy, taking the girls hands in her own. ‘You’re a very attractive girl,
Daisy,’ she smiled, ‘one day you’ll be a very beautiful woman.’

Daisy shrugged with embarrassment.

‘You
will
!’ The two older women exchanged amused glances. ‘I was, too, you know, though you’d hardly believe it now!’

‘You
are
,’ Daisy stammered, ‘you really are beautiful. I think you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen!’

‘Oh, that’s kind,’ the woman replied. ‘But if you’ve lost the love of your life, Daisy, as I hope you never will, it doesn’t matter how beautiful you are or
how many men chase after you, you’re not interested. I regret not marrying him every day of my life, I’d give anything, everything, for the chance to go back and change it. He was the
only one and he still is, even all these years later.’ She sighed. ‘You see, everyone looks at the Great War and feels horrified at the millions of young lives that were sacrificed on
the battlefields, but they don’t understand that there were other lives lost here at home – the young women who never married their men. They weren’t
actually
lost, of
course, but they might as well have been, and if they never married, then they never had children. I often think of that, you know, what our children would have been like. But by the sounds of
things if they had been born they would now be getting ready to fight the Germans all over again.’

‘Do you really think it will come to that?’ Mrs Johnstone asked quietly.

‘I’m afraid it sounds very much like it.’ Mrs Armstrong looked thoughtful, then she gave herself a shake that was transmitted through her hands to Daisy. ‘Now look at
us!’ she said brightly, her eyes shining a little too much, ‘standing here gloomily like MacBeth’s witches!’ She turned to Daisy again, still holding her by the hands.
‘I was brought up to respect and obey my parents. I expect you were, too, Daisy, but they’re not always right, that’s all I’ll say. Just don’t you let the love of your
life get away from you, Daisy, no matter what anyone else thinks or says. Joan here is living proof that marriage works: she found her man and held on to him!’

Daisy listened for the rest of the fitting session as Mrs Johnstone kept the conversation going in a polite voice with the strong Geordie inflections evened out, and thought how much she had to
learn. Later, over sandwiches in the office, she talked about Mrs Armstrong.

‘Money really isn’t everything, is it?’ she asked thoughtfully.

‘No, it isn’t, Daisy.’

‘She sounded so sad, poor woman.’

‘Well, she is,’ Mrs Johnstone replied.

‘But you’d think she’d have found someone, wouldn’t you? I mean, she must’ve been a looker in her day, and she’s so wealthy.’

‘It doesn’t always follow, Daisy.’

‘And she’s so nice, she’d have made a lovely mother.’

‘Well, there are a whole bunch of lessons there for you,’ Joan Johnstone said quietly. ‘Just because she’s got lots of money doesn’t mean she should be horrible;
just because she’s beautiful doesn’t mean she’s able to forget – what did she call him? – the love of her life? And just because she’s rich and beautiful
doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her sadnesses or that she shouldn’t be nice. Now stop it, you’re getting morbid!’

‘Do you think there is such a thing?’ Daisy asked. ‘As a love of your life, I mean. Does everyone have one?’

‘Now how would I know that, Daisy? Maybe there is one for everybody, but not everybody meets theirs.’ She looked at Daisy’s serious face and suddenly laughed.
‘You’ll have us both in tears in a minute! Let’s change the subject. I want you to model a dress for a couple of customers the day after tomorrow.’

Daisy choked and stared at her.

Mrs Johnstone chuckled. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she teased. ‘Something go down the wrong way?’

‘You mean put a dress on and walk up and down?’ Daisy asked, horrified.

‘You see, it’s simple, isn’t it?’ Mrs Johnstone replied, calmly getting on with her lunch.

‘But I can’t!’ Daisy spluttered.

‘Why not?’

‘I’ll fall over, I’ll trip, I’ll … they’ll just laugh at me.’

‘No they won’t, they won’t even see you, they’ll only see the dress.’

‘But why me then?’ Daisy persisted.

‘Because you’re the right shape to
let
them see the dress.’

Daisy glowered at her.

‘Now what’s that look for?’ Mrs Johnstone demanded.

‘I hate my shape. I didn’t think it mattered here.’

‘Of course it matters, you daft girl! And why would you hate your shape?’

‘It’s all lumps and bumps and men grab me or leer at me, that’s why!’ Daisy said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t always this shape, I used to be normal. My sister’s
two years older than me, she’s nearly twenty, and she’s still normal, they don’t grab at her.’

‘Oh Daisy,’ Mrs Johnstone said, ‘you are quite beautiful. Has no one ever told you that?’

‘No. Women hate me and men just grab at me and rub themselves against me.’

‘My dear God!’ Mrs Johnstone whispered. She looked at Daisy’s embarrassed face across the desk. ‘Daisy, from now on you have to have a different outlook. You
are
beautiful, and that’s a plus, not a minus. You have to rise above the creatures of the gutter who don’t have the intelligence, education or natural graces to know how to behave.’
She looked at her again. ‘I want you to have your hair lightened,’ she said.

‘What?’ Daisy demanded. ‘Where I come from it’s bad enough already, what do you think will happen if I become a Peroxide Blonde?’

‘You will look like a million dollars, that’s what will happen,’ Mrs Johnstone said firmly. ‘Daisy, you never intended staying in Heaton, did you?’

Daisy sat in silence. She had always wanted to ‘get out’, but it was a vague notion. She had no plan, in her mind it was a kind of ‘someday’ thing. ‘No,’ she
said uncertainly, ‘but …’

‘But nothing, my girl! You’ve seen the young ladies we get in here, do you think of them as “Peroxide Blondes”?’

‘No, but …’

‘There you go with that “but” again! Daisy, today we will practise walking without falling down or tripping, and tonight you will become a golden blonde, not a Peroxide
Blonde.’

‘But I can’t, I have to go home and do the chores,’ Daisy protested.

Mrs Johnstone looked puzzled. ‘You have a mother, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but she’s an invalid,’ Daisy replied.

There was a short silence as both women acknowledged to themselves that Daisy had never openly discussed her family circumstances before.

‘How long has she been ill?’ Joan Johnstone asked quietly.

‘All the years since I was born,’ Daisy replied in a small voice. ‘One doctor told my father it was her heart, something from when she was a child, but my father says
it’s really her lungs.’

‘And she’s bedridden, Daisy? Totally?’

Daisy nodded.

‘And you do everything?’ Mrs Johnstone asked, suddenly remembering clues the girl had inadvertently dropped in the past and putting the pieces together. ‘The shopping, washing,
cooking, cleaning?’

Daisy nodded again.

‘But you mentioned a sister at the ropeworks, she must help, surely?’

‘No, no, Kay doesn’t do chores,’ Daisy said, shocked.

‘Why?’

‘Because one day she’s going to be a big star, she has her music to practise and she can’t have rough hands, and …’ Daisy stopped, realising for the first time
that it sounded strange.

‘I don’t understand …’ replied Mrs Johnstone, who did think it was strange.

‘My sister’s Little Kay Sheridan,’ Daisy explained, ‘though she’s not all that little now, of course.’

Mrs Johnstone thought for a moment. ‘The little girl who used to sing in the clubs?’

Daisy nodded. ‘She’s still going to be star,’ she said defiantly. ‘My mother says it always happens with child stars, there’s a slack spell while they grow up, then
they become adult performers.’

‘But for now she works in the ropeworks and you do all the housework?’ Even as she said it Mrs Johnstone looked and sounded as though she thought it was all nonsense.

Daisy looked at her glumly. ‘It’s not how it sounds,’ she protested, ‘Kay still has a beautiful voice, she’s still going to be a star. She’ll sing for the
world one day, not just the Irish clubs in Newcastle,’ she continued, falling back on her mother’s oft-repeated mantra. She looked up at Mrs Johnstone and they both laughed.
‘That’s what my mother says,’ Daisy said quietly.

‘Well I’ll tell you what, Daisy, tonight the star will do the housework.’

Daisy opened her mouth to protest. Kay didn’t know how to fill a kettle, the thing was unthinkable.

Mrs Johnstone held up her hand and turned her face to the side. ‘No “buts”, Daisy. I’ll get a message to your sister at the ropeworks that you’ll be late tonight,
and the star can get her hands dirty for once.’

Daisy’s stomach leaped. The thing wasn’t just unthinkable, it was impossible, maybe even a sin to be confessed. Even if she had beginner’s luck with the kettle, Kay opening up
the banked fire and putting coal on? Making a meal – even if all the basic work had been done earlier so that she just had to heat it up? Kay washing dishes – even with good old
dependable Dessie drying – seeing to Kathleen, washing her and emptying the bed pan she had taken to using since the distance to the bathroom had become too much for her?
Kay?

‘Now I look like, like …’

‘A million dollars,’ Mrs Johnstone beamed beside her, ‘just as I said you would.’

‘I was going to say that now I really do look like a streetwalker,’ Daisy said quietly.

Mrs Johnstone exchanged a look with the hairdresser. ‘What can you do?’ she asked, shaking her head with a smile. ‘Can you tell her we haven’t ruined her
forever?’

The hairdresser held a mirror this way and that for Daisy’s approval. ‘We’ve just lifted the colour, Daisy,’ she wheedled. ‘It’s not as if you had jet-black
hair and we dyed it blonde.’

Out of spite and defiance she had married George Johnstone, a draughtsman at the Vickers-Armstrong engineering works, a man unconnected with the Irish Geordie community, and she had married
badly. Not that George was a bad man or she a bad wife, and they still liked each other, even though they weren’t suited. But the love of her life he wasn’t, nor was she the love of
his. They had a nice Victorian terraced house in Holly Avenue in the Jesmond area, to the north of the city, with enough bedrooms to house the children that would come in time. They’d had
more than enough money and a bright future ahead. However, less than a year into their marriage, when they should have still been basking in that honeymoon glow, they’d run out of things to
say to each other. It was as simple as that. It was a great disappointment to them both, but they had rubbed along quietly enough these fifteen years or so, both of them giving the other room in a
partnership that existed in name only. They had an understanding, an unspoken but nonetheless still firm understanding, that neither would embarrass the other, that whatever arrangements they made
would be discreet.

And George, decent man that he was, had abided by that, carrying on his liaisons with her tacit approval, and never letting her find out officially. Joan, for her part, would have done the same
– if she had been interested in seeing other men, that was, which she wasn’t. There was nothing like having sex with someone you’d once thought you loved but now knew you
didn’t for putting you off the whole notion. She’d thought about it over the years and knew that even if she ever found a man she did love – that elusive love of her life –
she would’ve run off with him without a second thought, abandoning all security and propriety. However, she could never abandon George, he really didn’t deserve that, so seeing other
men was a risk she had decided not to take. To the outside world she and George looked like a well-set-up, happily married if childless couple, for which she was always blamed, as women always
were.

Joan was now a career woman and career women were disapproved of. Her job in Fenwicks took the place of children. She knew that was what others said, and it was true, but only because there
would be no children. It was a deep regret in her life, and sometimes she felt guilty that George would never have any either – she felt absolutely sure of that – but then she came to
the conclusion that the arrangement must have suited them both or they would have found ways out. Divorce wasn’t for people like them anyway, that was for Hollywood stars, and neither of them
could have handled the stigma if they’d parted. Joan especially did not want her family to ever have a whiff that she had made a mistake. She acknowledged that to herself, but it was not the
one they would see of marrying, ‘out’. She had made the mistake of not knowing the man she had married, and she was hardly alone there. It even happened to those who married
‘in’, not that her family would ever have admitted that.