A Better World than This (25 page)

‘Like four or five years, that’s if the roof doesn’t fall in first?’

Mr Penny laughed, dabbed his mouth with his napkin and stood up, draining his cup of tea. ‘A nice breakfast, Miss Bell. Beats a banana and a cup of water any old day.’

Daisy followed him to the door. ‘Is that
all
you’ve been having?’

‘I survived. As you see.’ He shrugged himself into a tweed overcoat, picked up a leather case and placed a brown trilby on his head. Opening the front door, he raised the hat an inch from his head and stepped out into the street. ‘Till this evening, Miss Bell. There’s a teachers’ meeting, so I may be an hour or so late.’

‘The meal will be ready when you are, Mr Penny,’ Daisy said, going in, closing the door, then leaning against it for a minute.

What a funny man he was? Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. She felt as if she had known him all her life. Talking to him was like talking to an older brother. No need to be on the defensive, either. A
pal
, in spite of her mother always maintaining that there was no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman. She wondered if he taught boys or girls, and decided that either way he would be tolerant and wise.

‘I’m not stopping here.’ Jimmy was staring at a slice of toast when she went into the kitchen. ‘I am going to run away.’

As Florence and Daisy exchanged a glance of dismay, he scraped his chair back and ran out into the hall, climbing the
stairs
two at a time, pushing past a chortling Mr Leadbetter gaily poking a floorboard with a giant-sized screwdriver.

‘Jimmy?’ Daisy followed the sobbing boy into the bedroom. She closed the door. ‘That’s right. Have a good cry. Here, have my handkerchief, it’s not as hairy to the nose as that blanket.’

‘I don’t like you!’ Jimmy wailed, snatching the handkerchief from her and scrubbing at his eyes. ‘And I don’t like it here, neither.’

Daisy carefully kept her distance. ‘I agree with you, love. I don’t much like me either. And
I
don’t like it here one little bit. Not with everything cold and messy.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘You saw that man on the landing? He’s just told me this house is dropping to bits before his very eyes.’

A gleam appeared between the swollen slits of Jimmy’s eyelids. ‘You mean
really
dropping to bits? Big holes in the floors and everything?’

‘He says so.’ Daisy sat down on the bed, still well away from him. ‘So I might just have a good cry too. Have you finished with that handkerchief?’ She accepted the sodden ball. ‘So what I thought I’d do. … Yes, what I decided to do was to go out to the shops, and on the way back call in at the pet shop on the corner and buy myself a kitten. To cheer myself up. You know?’

‘Or a puppy?’

‘No, a kitten.’ Daisy restrained herself from putting out a hand to touch the drooping bullet-shaped head. ‘Do you remember coming to see me once when I lived in the pie shop?’

‘No,’ lied Jimmy.

‘Oh, well, never mind. But we had a cat there. To catch the mice in the bakehouse. A ginger cat, striped like a tiger. When I came to live here we had to leave the cat behind.’

‘Why?’

‘Because cats get used to places, rather than people. And you know, that old cat didn’t love anybody! He was so mean
he
used to slink about just hating everybody. His eyes met in the middle. Like this.’ As Jimmy forgot himself enough to steal a glance, Daisy crossed her eyes and bared her teeth, holding her breath when the corners of the small set mouth quivered briefly into the semblance of a reluctant smile. ‘So I think I’ll choose a kitten that is all furry and snuggly. One I can call something like Ethel.’

‘That’s not a right name for a kitten.’

‘Or Kevin, maybe.’

‘That’s a
boy’s
name. There’s a boy in my class called Kevin. I
hate
him.’

Daisy got up and walked to the door. ‘Of course, if you came with me to help me choose it, you could choose the name.’ She hesitated, one hand on the door knob. ‘But then if you’re going to run away you’ll have your packing to do, won’t you?’

‘I’m not
stopping
here, though.’ Jimmy followed her on to the landing, tripping over what could only have been the faded pattern in the beef-tea-coloured oilcloth. ‘My dad’ll come and fetch me if I ask him. I can write letters you know.’

‘I’ll give you a stamp,’ Daisy said. ‘Now go down and talk to Florence for a minute. I’ve got to have a word with Mr Leadbetter.’

‘I don’t like Florence. …’ Jimmy’s hoarse voice spiralled over his shoulder like a trail of grey smoke. ‘I bet she’s a witch. She looks like a witch. There are lots of witches about, you know.’

‘Mr Leadbetter?’ Daisy addressed the builder’s right ear, the other one being pressed to the floorboards listening hopefully, she guessed, for the scurrying of the death-watch beetle. ‘Could I have a word with you, please?’

With the ease of a man half his age, Mr Leadbetter peeled himself from the floor and stood up. ‘I have to tell you, Miss Bell …’ he began cheerfully, but Daisy held up her hand.

‘I’m going to be straight with you, Mr Leadbetter, because that’s the only way I know how to be.’ She smiled, causing
the
builder to widen his eyes in surprise.

This lass was a proper bonny woman! Now why hadn’t he seen that before? She was dressed like a rag-bag and her hair was crying out for a perm, but when her face lit up like that what a difference it made. Younger, too, than he’d thought. Nobbut a lass, really. He waited.

‘I have only so much money to spend on the structural work in this house.’ Daisy mentioned a figure. ‘That much and no more, so we have to stick to priorities. Those are wash basins in all the bedrooms, a new bath, a new toilet, more working space beneath the cupboards in the kitchen, the whole house repapering and that ugly brown paint stripped from all the doors and repainted cream. A downstairs toilet built in, and the dining-room fireplace opened up so that a gas fire can be fitted. I believe you rewired the house for electricity not all that long ago, so I’m sure that’s all right.’ She paused to take a breath. ‘I want it done as quickly as possible in order to have the hall and the lounge recarpeted in time for Easter visitors.’ She smiled again, looking straight into his eyes exactly on a level with her own. ‘So if you can give me your estimate, taking all that into consideration, maybe we can do business.’

She started for the stairs. ‘I realize you’ll have a lot of working out to do before you can give me a
detailed
estimate, and I appreciate your concern for the dry rot and the termites breeding merrily beneath the floorboards, but for the time being they’ll just have to get on with their lives and let me get on with mine. Remember, I’m not going to try to cater for folks who can afford to go on a continental holiday or on a cruise; just for folks who work hard and need a week or a fortnight away from it all. To enjoy themselves in
comfort
, Mr Leadbetter, because that’s what I’m determined to do for them. Feed them well and make them feel at home. An’ I’m no novice at that either. I’ve been in the catering trade since I left school, so I know what I’m aiming for.’ She put out a hand and let it rest lightly for a brief moment on the builder’s jacket sleeve. ‘Now! Do we understand each other, Mr
Leadbetter
? I’d like to think we do.’

‘You’ll be lucky if you’re ready to open by next Christmas, missus, with that lot on the agenda. You’ll be lucky if you’ve enough money left for a chip butty by the time you’ve finished.’

‘That was telling her,’ he said to his apprentice. ‘Now then, Mervyn, me lad, let’s have a dekko at what passes for a toilet. I reckon this one was put in when Queen Victoria was just a twinkle in her dad’s eye. Where’s me pencil?’

‘Behind your ear, Mr Leadbetter,’ Mervyn said, with all the animation of a slug emerging from a rotten apple. ‘Where you always keep it, Mr Leadbetter.’

‘So that’s the lowest figure you can quote me?’ Daisy faced Mr Leadbetter at the end of a morning in which she’d shopped, cleaned, made a pan of chips for Jimmy which he hadn’t eaten, and doubted the survival of the black and white kitten which was being cuddled, caressed, tickled, poked and prodded until it squealed for mercy. ‘It’s a lot more than I’d reckoned on.’

‘You’d be paying for the labour, remember, missus.’ The builder consulted a notebook with a hard grimy cover. ‘These rooms have all been papered on top of paper. Layers and layers of it.’ There and then he ripped off a strip of wallpaper, revealing another pattern underneath. He spoke jokingly to Florence, down on her knees by the lounge fireplace. ‘More layers here, missus, than a Spanish onion. Take Mervyn the best part of a week to strip this one room. Ha-ha haw haw!’

‘And I suppose by that you just mean the
top
layer?’ Florence got to her feet, dwarfing the little man by at least six inches. ‘But suppose
we
did the stripping and preparing ourselves? Leaving you with merely the papering? That would cut the cost considerably, wouldn’t it?’

Daisy shot Florence a grateful glance. In her mind she was already busily calculating the number of rooms and the hours taken up when she should be making curtains, running up
bedspreads
, repairing what was fit to be repaired, cleaning up years of neglect, and laying acres of linoleum.

‘Let me know when you’ve revised your estimate, Mr Leadbetter.’

She walked through to the kitchen in time to see the kitten daintily relieving itself beneath the table.

After dinner that night – lamb cutlets, with turnips and potatoes mashed together with butter, followed by steamed treacle sponge pudding and custard – Joshua Penny came into the lounge where Daisy and Florence were soaking the walls with water in readiness to strip away the accumulated layers of paper.

He had never, he thought, seen anyone look so tired and worn out as little Miss Bell did at that moment. Her friend, Miss Livesey, was wielding a large distemper brush, using it to sweep the water from a zinc bucket in wide arcs up and down the wall. Bending, then stretching up again, reaching the picture-rail without difficulty. In a way
enjoying
it, he could see.

‘You ladies are going to do the decorating yourselves, then?’ Moving a dust-sheet to one side, he sat down on the arm of the settee, then immediately got up again. ‘Here, let me.’ Smiling at Daisy, he took the brush from her. ‘It’s
all right
, Miss Bell. I was going to listen to a concert on my wireless, but I’d far rather be down here. One can get very tired of one’s own company at times, even of Mozart’s. If that isn’t sacrilege bordering on heresy.’

‘But it’s not right.’ Daisy hovered uncertainly behind him. ‘You’ve been out working all day. No, we’re not going to do the actual decorating. Just the stripping. It’s cheaper that way,’ she added, frank and honest as always.

‘You are a musical man, Mr Penny?’

Joshua blinked at the change in Florence’s accent. Not an hour before he had heard her chivvying the little lad into bed, saying that no, he
couldn’t
have the kitten in his room, not until it was properly house-trained. He had peeped round the
open
bedroom door on the way down, however, and seen the pair of them fast asleep in bed. Jimmy holding the kitten close to him, as if he cradled a teddy bear. Somehow, the sight had moved him immeasurably.

‘I love listening to music,’ he said. ‘But I don’t play any instrument, I’m afraid. My wife used to play the piano, but I got rid of it when I gave the house up.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘Do
you
play, Miss Livesey?’

‘No, unfortunately.’ Florence sloshed more water on to the wall. ‘But, like you, I am a devotee. Opera,’ she went on. ‘My mother had a gramophone and we had the whole set of Pagliacci records. “On with the Motley” – the heartbreak of a clown. So poignant, don’t you think?’

Joshua opened his mouth to reply, but Florence was well into her stride.

‘I am a lover of the arts, Mr Penny. “If you tickle us, do we not laugh?” Shakespeare.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Joshua said, bewildered.

‘Teaching is such a noble profession.’ She was even using her brush more ‘artistically’, Daisy thought, suppressing a smile. What fun Florence was when she got into her cultural stride. ‘I would have gone to college myself, but my mother’s health made it necessary for me to choose my hours to suit her.’

‘What
did
you do, Miss Livesey?’

Did Daisy detect an amused quiver in nice Mr Penny’s voice? No, she decided, he was just being his polite and curious self. Fascinated. Wanting to
know
.

‘Latterly, the cinema business. Since the onset of talking films,’ Florence said in the clipped cut-glass accent. ‘But Daisy here is the expert on that subject. She could tell you what the editor of
Picturegoer
had for his breakfast.’

‘Really?’ Joshua turned round, dripping water down his grey cardigan. ‘Me, too. There are plenty of cinemas in Blackpool, Miss Bell. Do you like the Busby Berkeley routines? With all those dancing girls moving into kaleidoscopic patterns? Did you see his
Gold Digger
film?
About
a group of girls in search of millionaire husbands? And Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in
Flying Down to Rio
? With the brilliant finale with chorus girls on the wings of flying aeroplanes? We must. …’

‘I expect it’s the sheer artistry that impresses you,’ Florence interrupted quickly. ‘The mathematical genius that goes into the formations. Are you on the science side, or the artistic, Mr Penny? No, don’t tell me. Let me guess.’

‘I teach backward children,’ Joshua said. ‘Mostly from deprived backgrounds. Undersized kids with rickets, or with impetigo on their chins.’ His expression was serious and intense. ‘A brother and sister, twins aged nine, with middle-aged faces on tiny stunted bodies. The father hasn’t worked for five years apart from a temporary job with the post office at Christmas. Weekly income of twenty-nine shillings, and a rent of eight shillings to pay out of that. And
they
are well off compared to some. An adequate income according to the Ministry of Health. The father was a weaver, a good conscientious worker in plain weaving with a choice at the time of plain or fancy cloth. And not knowing any better he chose plain, because he had no way of knowing the way things were going to turn out.’