A Better World than This (24 page)

‘I’ve brought you the most precious thing in my life. Into your safe-keeping, if you’ll have him for just a little while,
Daisy
. It’s a big favour I ask, Daisy, an unfair advantage to take, but I’m at the end of the road, Daisybell, with no way to turn. And he
likes
you. He could be happy here with you. I wouldn’t have brought him if I didn’t know that.’

At last he held her away from him and she saw genuine tears in his eyes. The sight of them moved her so much she felt her own eyes fill.

‘But you never wrote to me,’ she had to say. ‘All these months and not a word, Sam. Why?’

‘I was trying to forget you,’ he said at once. ‘A part of me hoped that once I’d qualified Aileen and I might get together again.’ He put a finger to her lips. ‘No, don’t say anything. I’m trying to be honest with you. I don’t love Aileen, but I’m a better father than a husband and we’d have been a family again, and maybe … oh, I don’t know, marriages are sometimes mended. For the sake of the children. But now. …’ He pulled her close again. ‘I can’t look any farther than the present – not even much farther than tomorrow.’

He was trying to tell her he wasn’t going to ask her to marry him. Not just yet. He had been perfectly honest with her, and for her to ask him straight out would be unforgivable. Daisy sighed. Yet everything inside her craved the truth. She had always needed to get things
clear
, to know where she stood. She didn’t want to make conditions or use moral blackmail. The subtleties of relationships with men were unknown quantities to her. She loved this man; he had said he loved her. He was asking her to take care of his child, so where did she stand? The practical side of her nature warred with the romantic. But her mother would have
needed
to know. As if Martha had suddenly materialized in a corner of the untidy kitchen, Daisy heard her chirrupy voice:

‘Nay, lass. What kind of a tale is that? Have a bit of respect for yourself, for if you don’t then nobody else is going to. I’m not suggesting you ask for it down in black and white, but is he going to marry you or isn’t he? Or are you going to fetch up his lad till it suits him to take him away from you? He loves you, you say? Pull the other leg, lass. This one’s got
bells
on. He’s as much use to you as a chocolate fireguard would be, is that one. He’ll break your heart as soon as look at you, that one will. Why should he choose you? Ask yourself that. Why
you
?’

‘I have known your worth,’ Sam was saying, ‘from that first moment when I heard you laughing in your mother’s shop. Pure gold, that’s what you are, Daisybell. Pure solid gold.’ Bending his head he kissed her again. ‘Tell me you’ll do it, Daisy. I’ll come up as often as I can, I promise. There’s nothing to stand in our way now.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘Nothing at all.’

Too tired even to say goodnight – besides, there wasn’t another bed made up – they gravitated rather than moved into the brown lounge and sat entwined on the wide ugly settee. Sam fell asleep almost at once, and Daisy tiptoed upstairs and brought a blanket down – brown again – and was tucking it gently round him when he stirred and pulled her down beside him.

‘Don’t leave me, Daisy, love,’ he whispered, then at her involuntary start of dismay: ‘I won’t … don’t be afraid. Just let me hold you. Like this. …’ Almost at once he was asleep again, his head on her shoulder, and Martha’s ghost materialized on the hideous brown and orange peg rug, wagging a telling finger.

‘You daft ’aporth. See. I was right about him all along. Out for just one thing, like all men. Steal your virtue then leave you high and dry, spoiling you for a decent man. You silly, silly girl.’

But he wasn’t, because he didn’t. Daisy held him close and watched him sleeping, her mind in a turmoil of indecision and apprehension, until at long last she fell asleep herself just as a hazy dawn filtered through the brown curtains, and her body clock, conditioned to early rising, jerked her awake at half-past four in time to stoke the fire-oven. Till she remembered where she was and how, in the past few hours, her life had taken a turn she could never have envisaged, not in the wildest of her fantasies.

*

Florence came down before six, fully dressed and with her hair pinned up in its pleat, pale and composed and prepared to be servile and to keep her thoughts to herself.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me what it’s all about? Where is he?’

Daisy closed the kitchen door. ‘Asleep. In the lounge.’ She swallowed hard, hoping the hated blush wouldn’t materialize, but she felt it warming her cheeks like a scald. ‘He’s going back to London this morning, but he’s leaving … he’s leaving his son with me.’

‘He’s what?’ Florence forgot to be circumspect. ‘For how long, am I allowed to ask?’

‘Indefinitely.’ Daisy avoided Florence’s eyes. ‘His wife has left him and taken the little girl with her, but she doesn’t want Jimmy. So … I’ve said he can stay here.’

Florence stared hard at Daisy. At her crumpled skirt and tired puffed face. ‘You’ve not been to bed, have you?’ Realization dawned. ‘You’ve been with him. All night! Haven’t you?’ She sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘You really have done it, haven’t you? And I always thought you, of all people, had your head screwed on right.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You
didn’t
, did you? You wouldn’t be that stupid. Would you?’

‘He has more respect for me.’ The colour in Daisy’s face deepened again. ‘When he gets his divorce we’ll be getting married. Oh yes we will,’ she emphasized. ‘So don’t look at me like that.’

Florence flung out an arm in a dramatic gesture. ‘And what about all this? The house? The lodgers? The money you’ve sunk into it? Everything? What is he going to do? Pass his flamin’ exams, then come up here and sit in the corner peeling potatoes like Mr Mac next door, or stand at that sink washing up, with a towel tied round his middle? Or are you going to give all this up? Even before you’ve got started?’

And what about
me
, a voice inside her head was saying. Where do
I
come in all this? She pushed the ignoble thought aside. Daisy looked so crushed, so vulnerable, so
awful
with
her
hair as straight as a yard of pump-water; so much like an early Christian martyr resigned to being a lion’s breakfast, Florence felt a sudden upsurge of exasperated affection.

‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll set the tables. You’ll be cooking breakfast, that goes without saying.’

‘Don’t hate me, Florence.’ Daisy’s voice was very small. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you turned against me now.’

‘Whither thou goest,’ Florence said at once, about to qualify this when Sam opened the door. ‘
Excuse
me,’ she said, managing to pass him without touching him.

‘I’m going now, love.’

Sam rubbed a stubbly chin with a thumb. ‘I’ve got to get back to take the boss into town this afternoon. I can shave when I get there.’

The kettle came to a noisy boil, and Daisy turned off the gas jet. He had done this once before. On the day her mother had died. Explained that he must leave and gone quickly, leaving her muddle-headed and bereft.

‘I’ve been up and said goodbye to Jimmy. He knows what’s going on. He’s okay.’ Sam reached into an inside pocket and took out his wallet. ‘We agreed ten shillings a week, didn’t we?’ He put two pounds down on the table. ‘I think you’ll find all his things in the case. Aileen’s pretty methodical.’

As if someone had nudged him, he came and put his arms round Daisy. ‘I’m not going to say thank you, because there isn’t a word adequate enough to express how I feel.’ He traced her mouth with a finger. ‘You’ve saved my life, Daisysbell. You’re the best in the world. Do you know that?’

‘
Excuse
me,’ Florence said, coming into the kitchen for the knives and forks, then going out again, her back as rigid as an exclamation mark. From upstairs came the sound of a door banging closed and a man whistling.

‘Mr Schofield,’ Daisy said faintly. ‘He works as a postman so he can go dancing in the afternoons.’

‘Then I’ll let you get on.’ Sam nodded at the frying pan. ‘Before I’m tempted to linger. I’ll stop half-way down if I’m making good time.’

In the hall he kissed Daisy again, shrugged himself into the black leather coat, took the leather helmet down from its antler peg, hesitated, then pulled Daisy to him again.

‘There’s a lot more to say,’ he whispered, ‘and there hasn’t been time, but I’ll write. I’ll write tonight. See you soon,’ he added, opening the door to a tiny round man with a bald head ringed by a Friar Tuck fringe, and a boy with the aged crumpled features of a garden gnome.

‘Mr Leadbetter.’ The man’s face widened into a smile. ‘Your builder. Nowt like an early start, missus.’ He stepped round Sam, followed by the boy carrying a bag of tools so obviously heavy it stooped his thin shoulders almost level with his prominent ears. ‘Now, if you’ll give me some idea, missus. …’

‘I won’t be a minute.’ Flustered and unhappy, Daisy went out to the kerb and stood watching Sam straddle the motorbike, fasten the flying helmet beneath his chin and pull on the black leather gauntlet gloves. Her ‘Goodbye, Sam’ was lost in the sudden roar of the engine, but his eyes, behind the leather goggles, seemed to be signalling a message she failed to catch. With a roar that reverberated in her eardrums he was gone, bending over the handlebars of the hideous and noisy machine like a contender in the TT races on the Isle of Man.

Leaving Mr Leadbetter tut-tutting over the impossibility of turning the space under the stairs into a downstairs toilet and Florence scraping the burned bits off a slice of overdone toast in the kitchen, Daisy went upstairs to Jimmy.

‘Well then,’ she said, with a heartiness she was far from feeling. ‘How about getting out of that bed and coming down to breakfast? A boiled egg,’ she suggested, ‘with toast soldiers. I expect you have toast soldiers down in London, don’t you?’

‘I
hate
eggs,’ Jimmy said promptly, his eyes wide and wary above the blanket pulled up to his ears. ‘Eggs come out of hens’ bottoms. Yuk.’ He made a vomiting sound, his eyes never leaving her face as he gauged her reaction.

‘Well, toast and honey then.’ Daisy remembered unpacking a jar, so that was all right.

‘Yuk!’ Again the graphically expressed disgust. ‘Honey comes out of bees’. …’

Daisy interrupted quickly. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll find something.’ She ruffled the dark tuft of hair which was all she could see now of Jimmy. ‘Mr Penny’s in the bathroom so you can wash your hands in the kitchen just for once.’ She bent down to the case lying open on the floor. ‘My goodness, this is a nice jersey. How about putting this on today?’

‘Yuk. …’

Daisy struggled to keep her voice even. What had she expected, for heaven’s sake? That the little boy would throw his arms round her neck and tell her how happy he was to be dumped on her in the middle of the night, a strange woman he’d met once, almost a year ago? That he would trip merrily into the bathroom and wash and clean his teeth before coming down to eat his breakfast looking like Freddie Bartholomew in
Little Lord Fauntleroy
?

‘I smoke,’ came the announcement from the bed. ‘Cigarettes.’

‘Oh, really?’ Florence said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. ‘That’s interesting. What brand?’ She spoke quickly to Daisy. ‘You’d better go downstairs. That builder says this house is falling to bits, and he seems to think that’s so funny he’s down there laughing his socks off. I don’t know whether he’s joking or not, but we can only hope he is.’

‘Now then, young man,’ Daisy heard her saying, as she flew downstairs to stem the builder’s hilarity. ‘Out of that bed!’

Mr Leadbetter thought that his every utterance was a scream and had the laugh to prove it. ‘Haha, haw haw, haha.’ Each burst of mirth only lasted for a second, but his obvious enjoyment had a profoundly depressing effect on Daisy.

‘Jerry-built,’ he announced, tapping a wall with a hammer. ‘Haha, haw haw. See that crack in the ceiling, missus?
Subsidence
, missus. Haha, haw haw. And that discoloration by the skirting board? Damp course faulty, if you want my opinion.’ This last statement almost convulsed him so much that the ensuing laugh turned into a spluttering cough.

‘Excuse me.’ Florence pushed past them, giving Daisy the thumbs-up sign. ‘Getting dressed,’ she whispered to Daisy. ‘And Mr Penny will be down any minute. He’s in a hurry to catch his train.’

‘Mr Leadbetter.’ Daisy spoke firmly. ‘While you’re counting my blessings, could you go upstairs and look at the bathroom. And watch out for mildew. I’ve had four towels rotted since yesterday.’

‘A joker, eh?’ Mr Leadbetter winked at his apprentice, standing putty-coloured and shy behind him. ‘Well, you’re going to need a sense of humour before this lot’s set to rights. Haha, haw, haw! Leave them tools down here, lad. And watch out you don’t fall through the stairs, missus.’

‘Dry rot?’ Daisy suggested sweetly.

‘All I will say, missus,’ Mr Leadbetter replied dead-pan, ‘is that if you’ve left owt on the landing it might be safer to go out and buy a new one than run up to fetch it. That’s all I’m prepared to say.’

‘Things will soon be running smoothly, Mr Penny.’

Daisy placed two perfectly poached eggs in front of her lodger, unaware that she was speaking on a note of rising hysteria. ‘You must be thinking you’ve got a madhouse going on all around you.’ She hesitated, feeling the hated blush warming her cheeks. ‘It was just that my … my fiancé turned up unexpectedly. From down south. I’m going to look after his son for a while.’

‘Nice little lad.’ Mr Penny busied himself with his breakfast. ‘I caught him hanging out of the landing window just before I came down. Not
too
far out,’ he soothed. ‘So your fiancé is a widower, like me?’

‘No. Sam isn’t a widower.’ Daisy remembered the uninhibited curiosity of this man, and how she had
recognized
it as a trait she possessed herself. ‘He’s getting a divorce. It’s just that it isn’t convenient for Jimmy to be with his mother.’

‘I see,’ Mr Penny said, seeing nothing at all. ‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of Mr Leadbetter, Miss Bell. He used to do quite a lot of work for Mrs Entwistle, and he always makes it sound like it can’t be done, and if it can, will take some considerable time.’