The Penningtons (17 page)

Dilys heard Hettie’s heartfelt sigh.

‘And now, it seems, Dilys, that the pigeons are coming home to roost – with a vengeance!’

‘Oh Hettie! I’m so sorry . . . but what can be done now?’

‘Nothing. There’s no way to put things right. We just have to hope and pray that the police catch him before he kills the pair of us!’

Daisy decided it would look too eager to be on time so arrived five minutes early and waited on the other side of the street until it was five past. When she went in, however, Steven Anders was already seated at a table in the window and he had been watching her through the net curtains.

‘Oh, you weren’t!’ Daisy cried, mortified.

‘I was worried, Miss Letts,’ he admitted. ‘I thought you were changing your mind and I willed you to cross the road and come in – and you did!’

Daisy settled in her chair, patted her hair and treated him to a beaming smile. ‘Suppose I had suddenly run off? What would you have done?’

‘Run after you! What else could I do? The waiting has been forever!’

How wonderfully honest, she thought, surprised. ‘I began to think there were more than twenty-four hours in each day!’ she confessed.

The waitress arrived, notebook and pencil at the ready and looked from one to the other. ‘Made up your minds?’ she asked, ‘or shall I come back in a couple of minutes.’

‘That would be helpful. Thank you,’ said Steven, picking up the menu and opening it. ‘Let’s see, they do a variety of sandwiches or scones with jam and cream. Or you can have something more substantial such as a poached or scrambled egg on toast.’

Or I could just sit here with you and not bother with the food, Daisy thought to herself but she said, ‘I fancy the poached egg if that’s not being too greedy.’

‘Then we’ll both have that,’ he agreed quickly, ‘and a pot of tea and a plateful of fancy cakes to follow. How does that sound, Miss Letts?’

‘Wonderful. This really is awfully kind of you . . . Mr Anders.’

‘I’d like us to use Christian names if you’re willing. Miss Letts sounds so formal.’

‘I am willing, Mr . . . that is, Steven!’
More
than willing, she thought. I’d be utterly wretched if he hadn’t suggested it.

He caught the waitress’s gaze and she hurried back to take the order.

As soon as she had left them Steven thrust a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. Startled, Daisy stared at him.

‘You must forgive me,’ he said. ‘It’s just a little gift – of no real value, but as soon as I saw it I thought you would like it.’ He looked at her anxiously.

‘I do forgive you,’ she told him, reaching out for it. She opened it excitedly and found a small pink velvet pincushion in the shape of a mouse. The eyes were two small buttons and the tail was narrow pink ribbon. ‘Oh, how sweet!’ she cried, utterly entranced. ‘I love it! I shall throw away my old one and use this one instead – although it will be difficult to stick pins into such a nice mouse!’ She looked at him with shining eyes. ‘Thank you so much . . . Steven.’

‘I’m glad you like it. I found it in the market yesterday on a stall for raising money. Everything on the stall was handmade by the Ladies Group. They raise money to help fund the soup kitchen.’

Daisy’s eyes widened. ‘I know one of those ladies,’ she told him and explained that Dilys Maynard was a member of the group, and that snippet of information led to an account of the trouble the Pennington family was having.

Steven’s expression changed as he listened to her account of Dilys’s robbery and Monty’s broken windows.

‘I wish you weren’t working for them, Daisy,’ he confessed. ‘It sounds as though you’ve been lucky that no one has been hurt. Mr Pennington had no right you ask you to stay overnight in that house after what had happened.’

‘But it hadn’t happened then. He asked me because the housekeeper had left suddenly and he was afraid to be alone. The burglary happened later.’

‘Even so, I wouldn’t like anything to happen to you, Daisy. Looking after him is quite a responsibility and you’re rather young . . . at least, you look young.’ He flushed. ‘That is—’

‘I’m nearly eighteen,’ she told him, touched by his concern for her welfare. ‘It’s a rather big house and I didn’t like to think of him all alone at night and frightened because at the time he’d been a semi-invalid for years and—’

‘Isn’t he now?’

‘No.’ She regarded him proudly. ‘I discovered that he wasn’t ill or anything so I persuaded him to get up and about and now he quite likes it – being mobile again, I mean, and not stuck in his room with no one to talk to.’

‘You really are an amazing girl, Miss – I mean Daisy.’ After a moment’s deliberation Steven said, ‘I could take a quick look at some of the family documents, if you like. It’s strictly against the rules but . . .’

Daisy was immediately torn. Part of her was thrilled with the idea of learning more about Monty’s family but she understood the risks he would be taking.

‘I don’t want you to get into any trouble on my account,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you’d better not.’

‘I’ll be careful, Daisy, but I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.’

Daisy hesitated. ‘I must admit I’d be interested to know more,’ she confessed.

He smiled. ‘I won’t promise anything but I’ll see what I can do. It will be our secret.’

‘I promise I won’t tell a soul!’

The waitress returned with the poached eggs and saw the mouse pincushion.

‘That’s so pretty,’ she said as she set down the plates.

‘It’s a present,’ Daisy said proudly, with a glance at Steven.

The eggs were just how Daisy liked them, without the uncooked white that always spoiled eggs for her. By the time they had finished off the cakes and had a second pot of tea, they reluctantly parted. Steven made no attempt to kiss her but he did hold her hand for a long time and Daisy parted from him with the promise of another meeting ringing in her ears and the precious velvet pincushion clutched tightly in her hand.

Daisy went straight home to tell her mother all about her time with Steven Anders and her mother listened eagerly without interruption but followed her self-imposed silence with a string of questions. How old was this Steven? Was Daisy sure he was single and not already walking out with another young woman? Were his intentions honourable? When was she going to bring him home so that they could meet him and hopefully approve the friendship?

Daisy did
not
tell her mother anything about Steven’s promise to see what he could learn about the Pennington family. That seemed a step too far. But she remained intensely curious and looked forward to learning more about the family with which she was so closely involved.

‘So the two of you are meeting up again?’ her mother asked.

‘Yes. That is he said so . . . and I believe him.’

‘I shall feel a lot happier when we’ve met him, Daisy. You must let him know that. Young men these days sometimes feel it’s their right to take liberties with a young woman and you are very young.’

‘Nearly eighteen, Ma!’ Daisy reminded her. ‘You married Dad when you were nineteen.’

‘Things were different then, Dais. Things were simpler . . . more straightforward.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Look Daisy, there’s something we need to talk about. You do know, Dais, that your pa and me . . . Well, we’ve always done our best by you.’

Daisy nodded. She was only half listening and her eyes were on the velvet mouse. She would treasure it all her life, she vowed silently, and she would never,
never
stick pins in it! It was a token of Steven’s love for her. Well, maybe not
love.
Not yet. But a token of something . . . maybe of his interest in her . . .

‘Daisy! Are you listening? This is important.’

‘I’m listening, Ma!’ Daisy insisted untruthfully.

‘The thing is that we love you, Daisy, as any real mother and father love their children.’ She looked at Daisy earnestly, her face slightly flushed. ‘To us you truly are our daughter. Nothing will ever change that, you see. Nothing can ever change the way we feel about you so you mustn’t think that anything we tell you will alter that.’ She waited for a reaction but when none came she said, ‘Do you understand, Dais?’

‘Yes, Ma. I do.’ Daisy pressed the mouse to her lips. I know he loves me! I
know
he does! she thought. She closed her eyes, wrapped up in her new found joy.

Her mother laid a shaking hand on Daisy’s shoulder and searched for the right words. ‘Sometimes, Dais, a woman finds it hard to have a child and . . . and
cannot
have one so she, I mean they – her pa and ma have to . . . to find a child to love and your father and I . . . Are you listening, Daisy?’

‘Yes, Ma!’ Daisy glanced at the clock and jumped to her feet. She threw her arms round her mother and said, ‘Say “love to Pa” for me. Tell him he’ll like Steven! You both will.’ But not as much as I do! she thought. ‘I’m going to be late back at work. ’Bye for now.’ She kissed her mother and almost ran from the cottage. Maybe this time next year she would be living with Steven as a married woman! With her face aglow at this wonderful prospect, she hurried back along the lane to see what, if anything, had happened during her absence.

Behind her in the cottage, her mother rested her arms on the table, laid her head on her arms and began to cry.

When Tom came home later that day, Martha told him about the new young man in Daisy’s life and spoke about the Penningtons.

‘I don’t understand why they are being pestered by this wretched man,’ she told him. ‘I wonder if we ought to take Daisy away from there until the police catch him. Then she could go back.’ She looked at him anxiously as she stirred the stew. ‘She might be in danger.’

Tom frowned in concentration. ‘We can’t make her, Martha, and you know how determined she can be.’

‘Determined? Stubborn, you mean!’

‘Well . . . yes. She does dig her heels in sometimes.’ He sighed. It had been a long day and they had got very little work done. The bay had gone lame and they needed both horses to pull the harrow.

A day wasted meant a day’s money lost and the boss wasn’t too pleased about it although he couldn’t blame Tom. A horse was a finicky creature and could go lame at the drop of a hat!

He became aware that his wife was looking at him, waiting for an answer to something she had said that he had missed. ‘What’s that again?’ he asked.

She was ladling stew on to his plate. ‘I said we should never have agreed to let her stay there overnight with old Pennington, they’re a funny lot. But the money’s useful and they’re not too far away and she seems to like it there.’

He stared hard at her, for the first time noticing her reddened eyes. ‘You been crying? You have! What’s going on, love?’

‘It was nothing really but . . .’ She swallowed hard.

‘It must be something.’

‘It was just . . . I suddenly felt like Daisy was going to leave us before long and I . . . I tried to tell her about the adoption and she wasn’t even listening! All she could talk about was this young man . . . and he’d given her a pincushion like a mouse . . . velvet with a ribbon for a tail. You’d think it was a diamond ring!’ She swallowed. ‘And I thought I was trying so hard and telling it rather well so as it wouldn’t come as a shock –’ suddenly her eyes filled with tears again – ‘and all she could think about was the stupid mouse!’

Tom hid a smile.

‘I’m telling you, Tom, she wasn’t even listening to me! It was so important but she didn’t take a word in and next minute she’d gone dancing off, back to the Penningtons without a care in the world!’

Tom searched for the right words. ‘Maybe it was for the best.’

As he feared she seized on them. ‘How for the best exactly?’

‘That she didn’t take it all in. I mean she was so happy perhaps it was the wrong time to give her a shock. To bring her down to earth, like.’

Brushing away her tears, she stared at him. ‘Do you think so, Tom? Really?’

‘I reckon so.’ He held his breath.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said hopefully. ‘Better to tell her when she’s a bit calmer, eh?’

‘I reckon so.’ Tom handed her a none-too-clean handkerchief. ‘Eat your dinner, love. It’s getting cold.’ He pushed a mouthful of potato into his mouth, watching her warily. One thing he hated was women’s tears. He never knew what to say and whatever he said seemed to come out wrong. If he tried to cheer her up, she needed sympathy. If he offered sympathy it seemed that all she wanted was to be cheered up. Now he decided to take a chance. ‘Cheer up, lass!’ he advised. ‘You can talk to her some other time. Any rate, most likely some of the words sunk in without her noticing.’

‘It’s not an easy thing to talk about, Tom,’ she told him earnestly, pushing food on to her fork. ‘You try. See just how hard it is. It’s so important to get the words right so she isn’t upset. She thinks I’m her ma and I’m not. She thinks you’re her pa—’

‘You are her mother, Martha!’ He stopped eating. ‘And so am I – her father, I mean! We’re all she ever had, all her life. She’ll understand. She’s bright, is Dais. She’ll see how lucky she was to come to us who really wanted her. Her real mother didn’t or couldn’t. Who knows or cares? Dais came to us and we’ve loved her every minute and done the best we could for her. She might have gone to an orphanage and been one of dozens of children!’

‘But Tom—’

‘Eat your dinner!’ The words came out harder than he expected but he knew he was in a strange land where he rarely put a foot right. Like walking across a rain-sodden moor, he thought, and putting your foot in a boggy hole and being sucked under.

The silence grew and Tom felt the food beginning to stick in his throat but at least she was eating again and he felt hopeful that maybe she was over the worst.

At last she said, ‘I have a feeling about this Steven Anders fellow. It might be serious between them.’

He didn’t answer. A ‘Steven Anders fellow’. Was that good or bad, he wondered. To change the subject he said, ‘Those Penningtons – it’s not an uncommon name round here. There was a woman used to come to the farm especially to see the horses and we’d exchange a few words.’ She was listening so he rushed on. ‘Nice woman. A bit highfalutin’ but nice enough. She came every Saturday for eggs and cream and honey. So she said. But always came to see the horses and ask after the family. She knew we had a daughter and she was interested. Christina – that was her name.’ He frowned. ‘No. It wasn’t . . . but summat like that like that. Cassandra! That was it. Or was it? Anyway, she brought a few carrots for the horses. But she was always pleasant. Always asked after Daisy.’