A Better World than This (46 page)

She wiped her eyes and asked him did she look too awful? ‘I’ll just splash my eyes with cold water in the bathroom on the way down,’ she said. ‘Then I must go and rescue Winnie.’ She laid a hand gently against his cheek. ‘Thank you for being so kind to me, Joshua. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

‘You
never
need to do without me,’ he said at once, but she was already on her way down the first flight of stairs to bathe her tears away and get on with what she had to do.

But Daisy
didn’t
know Florence.
Hadn’t
known Florence.
Joshua
went into his own room. He had seen the dark side of Daisy’s friend that afternoon in the hospital, seen her face contorted with rage and envy. She had told him that Daisy had spent the night with Sam, then watched his face to test his reaction. Tormented by rage, frustration and pain, she had done that.

Joshua picked up a hairbrush and smoothed back the sides of his thick brown hair. He narrowed his eyes at his reflection.

‘Oh, no, Daisy. You didn’t know Florence. You might think you did, but you were wrong.’ The brush was stilled in his hand. ‘But
I
knew her. After that revealing outburst I knew her very well. She couldn’t bear to think of you with a man.’ He threw the brush down. ‘And in your blessed innocence you never suspected the inference of that for a minute, did you, Daisy, love?’

Edna didn’t bat as much as an eyelid when she heard. She told Arnold that Florrie Livesey was neurotical. Hadn’t her mother been the same, scrubbing her flags till you felt you ought to step out in the road rather than walk on them? She was sweet on that lodger on the top floor, you know, the one in prison for stealing and thumping policemen. She’d gone dancing with him, and now she couldn’t bear the shame. How did she know he’d been arrested? Well, of
course
she knew. It wasn’t the sort of thing Daisy or that nice Mr Penny would keep to themselves when they visited her in hospital, now was it? It was all right for Arnold sticking up for her. He didn’t see her walking the streets last summer with her nightie sticking out from beneath her coat. He didn’t hear the mucky thoughts coming out of her mouth about her father, either. They were all the same, the Florrie Liveseys of this world. Sanctimonious on the outside, run a mile if they were involved in as much as a breath of scandal, yet underneath as depraved as the rest. Oh, yes, she’d had Miss Livesey weighed up right from the start. Bad blood would out in the end.

*

Arnold couldn’t quite make it all out. He had
liked
Florence. He would never forget the day he had seen her staggering down the hill leaning on Daisy. Something had told him she had never meant to do away with herself. More a cry for help, he would have said. And he couldn’t understand her choosing such a horrible way to end it all. Too messy and undignified for Florence. No, there was definitely something wrong somewhere, if only he could put a finger on it. He had a feeling Florence was being misunderstood right to the very end.

The boy driving the car lay on his bed at home going over and over it in his mind. He had been going too fast. He had pulled out to overtake. The woman had appeared out of the blue and there had been nothing he could do. It wasn’t his fault. There weren’t any actual witnesses, but his parents kept on reassuring him that it wasn’t his fault. The woman had been seen behaving strangely, walking about with bandaged feet in over-large slippers in the pouring rain for hours. She had been in hospital, the police had said, and apparently there was more to come out. They more or less
told
him to try not to take it too much to heart. Someone commits suicide every minute of every day, they had said.

He put an arm across his face to hide the sting of tears behind his eyelids. So why wouldn’t the look of horror on the poor woman’s face in that split moment of sickening impact fade from his mind? Why was he convinced she had tried to step
back
when it was too late? And why didn’t he go downstairs now and tell his father about it? Why was he so sure he would
never
tell anyone about it? Ever. Ever.

Because he wasn’t
sure
. How could you be sure about a thing that had happened so quickly? And if you weren’t sure, wasn’t the best thing to keep quiet? For ever.

But what a thing to happen on his eighteenth birthday. There was such a mist in front of his eyes he could no longer see the bust of Molière he had won for French speaking at school last term on his tallboy by the far wall.

Dear Daisy,

Your letter really shocked me, but I have to say right away that I’m not surprised. Florence was
unstable
. The way she used to look at me at times gave me the creeps. I have to say this, because I know that you will be blaming yourself for not realizing just how unbalanced she was. I’m sure you’ll be glad that Jimmy was well away before it happened. He keeps mentioning you, calling his mother Daisy when he forgets, but he’s settled back at home as though he’d never been away. Kids are far more adaptable than we give them credit for.

Knowing you, I expect you will be coping. Perhaps you’ve asked your aunt to stay on with you for a while? She’s hated my guts since she first set eyes on me, and who can blame her?

It’s no good, Daisybell. There is so much more I would like to say to you and yet when I try to write it down it comes out like a school composition. I’m far better at writing technical reports. By the way, my last examination results were excellent. I have now got my Higher National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering, which means I can start looking round for a job that fits in with my qualifications.

This brings me to what I intended to say right at the beginning of this letter. I will be coming up to collect the rest of Jimmy’s things and to see you in roughly two weeks’ time. I can’t tell you the exact date, but it will be over a weekend. We have a lot to talk about, Daisybell.

Yours,

Sam

P.S. Don’t be too sad. I couldn’t bear that.

‘What hurts the most is the way everyone seems to have written Florence off. As though they were just waiting for her to jump off the end of the pier or step into the road without looking.’

Joshua knew Daisy was referring to something in the letter
she
held in her hand. He had picked it up himself from the mat, noting the London postmark. ‘Did Sam say why he didn’t come to the funeral?’

‘I never expected him to,’ she said, so quickly he knew she was lying.

The funeral had been bleak and terrible, with Florence’s father telling everyone that his daughter had merely gone through a door to live with Jesus, and Daisy so overwrought she felt overwhelmingly grateful for the feel of Joshua’s arm around her. She had dried her eyes, gone back to cooking a dinner for thirteen, and agreed with Uncle Arnold, who had made the journey to Blackpool on his own, that life must go on.

‘You’re not one for chucking the towel in, lass,’ he had said, then he had caught his train to be back in time for his tea, still shaking his grizzled head at the mystery of it all. It was like a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing, he told himself. Everything slotting into place nice and easy, but not making a complete picture. He had carefully avoided getting into the same compartment as Florence’s father. ‘If he thinks he’s going to convert me between here and where we change at Preston he’s got another think coming,’ he had muttered, lighting a Woodbine and hiding behind his copy of the
Daily Herald
.

‘Sam is coming up in a couple of weeks, as a matter of fact.’ Daisy walked behind Joshua to the front door. ‘To collect the rest of Jimmy’s things. And to see me, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Joshua picked up his case and opened the door. As he always did, he raised his hat to Daisy before walking quickly down the street to the station to catch his train. She had got into the habit of seeing him off in the mornings, handing him his brown trilby and reminding him to wear his scarf if the weather had turned unseasonable.

Winnie as usual missed nothing. ‘If you have to get married, why don’t you marry Mr Penny instead of that London chap? He’s divorced, isn’t he?’

‘Who told you that?’

It was no use getting on her high horse with Winnie. Daisy accepted that Winnie had no finer feelings. If Winnie wanted to know then Winnie asked. She never took umbrage, never sulked. Since moving into Florence’s room she had sung her way round the house, polished the gleaming new taps of the wash basins in the bedrooms, whipped pillow-cases on and off, frightened the lives out of sleeping holidaymakers as she clattered into their rooms with the early-morning tea, flinging the curtains back with a flourish, her red hair standing on end with enthusiasm.

‘Mrs Chadwick in the front double wears
French
knickers, though she must be forty if she’s a day! Talk about mutton dressed as lamb. That little fat man from Darwen hangs his hair on the bedpost when he goes to bed. That young girl in the small back room sleeps in a
brassiere
, would you believe it, not that I blame her with bosoms like hers. I don’t know where they would end up if she didn’t keep ’em jacked up.’

She paused for a moment in her brisk beating of the eggs which were to go to table scrambled that morning. ‘Mrs Mac told me mam that your London chap is divorced. They’re always pumping me to find out what’s going on here.’

‘Well, there’s been plenty going on lately, hasn’t there, love?’ Daisy poured boiling water over a dish of Canary tomatoes to prepare them for skinning. ‘I think most of those booking to come back in July must be making sure they don’t miss the next instalment.’

Winnie took Daisy’s every utterance quite literally. ‘Oh, I think they like the food as well,’ she comforted, frothing the eggs over the sides of the basin in her enthusiasm.

Work was Daisy’s comfort and lifeline. Hard work and cooking. But it had always been so, she realized. No glamour, just a day-to-day slog, smiling at the visitors instead of the customers in the pie shop, getting up early, not to see to the boiler but to light the gas fire in the lounge, empty the ashtrays and open the window.

Word had got round, and most weeks she was fully
booked
. Hopeful couples knocked at the door on spec, slept one night then wanted to stay on. Daisy developed her own style of cooking, based on her knowledge of what tired workers coming home hungry liked – big helpings of unpretentious meals, avoiding extravagant delicacies which they couldn’t afford at home anyway. Which would have been immediately suspect in any case. Fish, fresh from Fleetwood, was on the menu at least twice a week. Fish pie, Joshua’s favourite meal, was easy to prepare. Smoked cod, coley fillets, peeled prawns, mushrooms, potatoes and cheese, butter and milk. All the ingredients were ready to hand on the kitchen table when the door-bell rang.

It was the early-afternoon lull in a landlady’s long and busy day. A spring-lit day, so warm that Winnie had gone off to see her mother wearing a knitted cardigan over a pink and white gingham dress. Daisy hadn’t the heart to tell her that the high round neck of a woollen vest was showing, or that the Evening in Paris scent she had doused herself with was enough to strip the bark off a tree at three paces. Winnie was so happy these days, so
keen
, so exuberant, she almost gave off sparks as she dashed round the house.

‘By gum, but yon lass is a worker,’ the last departing visitor had said, and no fewer than three families had mentioned her in the visitors’ book in the hall.

‘Like being mentioned in dispatches,’ Joshua had said, showing her the written comments, pleased as punch for her.

Joshua was biding his time. Daisy was in no way her normal ebullient self since Florence’s death; her smile was there, but it had a frayed-at-the-edges look about it. She had stopped talking about Sam altogether. Once Joshua had mentioned his name and she had flinched away as though the very sound of it upset her. He was coming to see her, she had said, and on that visit Joshua pinned all his hopes and his fears. Much more sophisticated than Winnie in his thinking, he didn’t exactly pray that Sam would drop off the nearest precipice, but he was ready metaphorically holding out the blanket of his love for Daisy if needed.

Daisy was wiping her hands on her apron as she opened the front door.

‘Yes? Can I help you?’ Her smile was warm, tinged with genuine regret as she pointed out the NO VACANCIES sign in the window. ‘If you want a room for this week I’m sorry but I’m fully booked. Next week I could manage to fit you in …’

The woman was slim-built, taller than Daisy, smart without being a fashion-plate. Thin, by Daisy’s yardstick, with white-blonde hair on which a powder-blue halo hat sat precariously. Her blue speckled tweed suit had a three-quarter coat and calf-length skirt, and the leather case she carried matched her gauntlet gloves and brown court shoes.

‘Miss Bell? Miss
Daisy
Bell?’ She seemed half amused by the supposition, but the little half smile did not touch her eyes. ‘Do you think I could come inside? The wind’s a lot fresher up here than it is down in London. I should have worn a top coat I suppose. I’m Aileen Barnet. Sam’s wife.’

It was no good Daisy trying to control the blush. Blushing had always been her downfall. She felt it suffuse her face with colour as the shock sent pricking sensations down her spine.

‘Please come in.’

Her voice, even to her own ears, sounded high-pitched. She led the way into the lounge, whipping off her apron as she went. Oh, dear God, it had happened, just the way her mother had prophesied it would right from the beginning. ‘His wife will come up and smack your face,’ she had said, ‘because she’ll find out about you. They always do.’

‘Please sit down,’ she said, sending up a fervent prayer of thanks that the house was empty of visitors for the time being with the weather being so unseasonable and everyone taking advantage. Then she sat down herself before her legs gave way beneath her.

‘Thank you.’ Aileen Barnet crossed slim ankles. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

God alone knew why she was nervous, but she was. So
this
was the Daisy young Jimmy brought into the conversation so
much
. ‘Daisy said that, Daisy did things this way. Daisy made chips better than shop chips, Daisy cut his hair, Daisy put
expression
in when she read to him.’ Aileen lit a cigarette, narrowing her eyes against the upcurl of smoke. So
this
was the Daisy Sam had described as being a typical old maid. Homely, with glasses, motherly and kind.