A Better World than This (39 page)

Daisy smiled. ‘Oh, Sam. You can always make me laugh. I wish you weren’t going back in the morning. Everyone will be arriving and I won’t even have time to say goodbye.’

He whispered something in her ear, half teasing, half serious. She couldn’t be sure which. She drew away from him, staring at him with startled brown eyes.

‘Oh, no. I couldn’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it would be wrong.’

‘A mortal sin? You’re not a Catholic kow-towing to the Pope, are you?’

‘You know I’m not.’

Daisy sat bolt upright on his knee, struggling to make sense
of
her emotions. What he had whispered had excited her; she could feel her heart beating faster. With frustrated passion, she supposed. She bit her lips and frowned. She was a two-headed woman, that’s what she was. One half of her wanting to sink back in Sam’s arms and let him have his way with her, the other half telling her not to be so daft. Besides, he was still married. He was still
seeing
his wife, even if only to have shouting rows with her about the children, which was what he had implied as they talked together on the pier. So if she gave in to him and had a baby there’d be no hasty marriage arranged to cover her shame.

‘I wouldn’t give you a baby,’ he said, as if reading her mind.

Daisy blushed. What a way to be talking like this, with the middle light switched on and her still wearing her pinny from the washing-up. For a moment she felt as if she was back on the Giant Plunger on the Pleasure Beach, going far too fast, with the earth dropping away from her.
Everything
was going too fast. In the last few hours Florence had gone into hospital and Bobbie had been taken into custody. The Easter visitors were arriving and in spite of her determination to manage she knew she would have to get extra help from somewhere.

Besides, where would the
romance
be in her creeping down to Sam’s room with her Auntie Edna straining her ears from the next room, maybe even bursting in and catching them in
flagrante delicto
– Florence had said that was a polite way of putting it. For Daisy to take the initiative like that would be awful, brazen. You wouldn’t catch Janet Gaynor or Deanna Durbin sneaking about in the middle of the night in their nighties, climbing into beds, even when invited. Besides, suppose Jimmy woke up with one of his nightmares and found her missing? And
worse
. Suppose he came to look for comfort and found her tucked up in bed with his father? Then went down to London and told his
mother
? Miss Bell would definitely be cited as co-respondent then.

The awful thing was she really wanted to. She shivered at the thought of lying close to Sam with their bare skins
touching
. She would belong to him properly then. It would make them seem almost married. It wasn’t as if she wanted to marry him wearing a wreath and veil, anyway. Daisy had never thought anyone over twenty-five suited orange blossom. A nice blue two-piece would be much more in keeping at a wedding where the groom was marrying for the second time.

But why didn’t he pull her down against him, instead of lighting a cigarette behind her back? Why didn’t he
force
her to make up her wavering mind?

‘If you come to me it must be because you want to,’ he said cheerfully, blowing smoke up over her left shoulder. ‘Sex isn’t the all-important thing you have built it up to be in your mind. You have to grow up some time, Daisybell, there’s nothing endearing about a thirty-year-old virgin.’

She whipped round. ‘I’m not thirty
yet
! Do I
look
thirty, Sam?’

‘Not a day over twenty-nine and a half.’ As he grinned impudently Daisy was sure her heart turned over. ‘Come here, sweetheart. You don’t know yet when I’m teasing, do you?’ He ground the cigarette out in the copper ashtray on its leather strap taped to the chair-arm. ‘You look about
seventeen
, all worried and anxious about whether to give in and do what comes naturally.’

‘Don’t make a joke of it, Sam. What if I did have a baby?’ Daisy said all in a rush, bemused by the way his eyes, seen at such close quarters, had little yellow flecks in their irises.

‘You wouldn’t. I’d look after you.’ He bent his head and kissed her.

‘What if somebody saw me?’

‘They wouldn’t if you timed it right.’ He kissed her again, parting her lips with the tip of his tongue.

‘What if you lost all respect for me?’

‘I would respect you more.’ His hand crept down to the fullness of her breast. ‘Oh, Daisy, I
need
to. You don’t know how much.’

His face burned against hers; she closed her eyes as he
fiddled
with the tiny buttons down the front of her Viyella blouse, then pushed the strap of her brassiere down to cup his hand round her breast. When he kissed her throat, she arched her back and tangled her fingers in his dark hair.

‘Sam … oh, Sam. …’

The opening of the front door brought her to her feet in seconds. Struggling to fasten the tiny buttons, breathing quickly, embarrassment flooding her entire body, she heard the click of Sam’s lighter as he lit a cigarette.

‘It’s okay, love. They’ve gone on through into the kitchen.’ He adjusted the band on her skirt for her. ‘Don’t look so
stricken
.’

Joshua couldn’t bear to look at Daisy. Her hair was mussed up, her eyes heavy, and her mouth still bore the almost visible imprint of Sam Barnet’s kisses. There was a button undone down the front of her blouse, but he switched his mind away from the implication of that.

‘Florence is okay.’ To avoid looking at her, he ran himself a glass of water and stood with his back to her drinking it. ‘Her feet aren’t as badly scalded as they thought at first, but she’s had a shock and for that reason they’ll be keeping her in for a couple of days.’

I should have gone to the hospital, Daisy thought. Somehow I should have found the time. Surreptitiously she fastened the odd button. It wasn’t that she didn’t
care
what was happening to Florence, far from it. She stared at Joshua’s broad back. It was just that with Sam around she seemed to become another person. A totally selfish person with no sense of loyalty or duty, no principles, no sense of right or wrong, unable even to
think
straight. Capable of
anything
.

‘I hope they gave her something for the pain,’ she said. ‘Florence is so highly strung, pain demoralizes her.’

‘She’s
all right
.’ There was such an edge of irritation to Joshua’s voice that Daisy immediately put the wrong interpretation on it.

‘You must be starving hungry, Joshua. If you’d like to go
through
into the dining room, I’ll bring something in a few minutes.’

‘No!’

‘Joshua!’ Daisy blinked. What was wrong with him? The way he’d just banged that glass down on the draining-board showed him to be in a filthy mood.

‘I don’t want anything, thank you.’

‘But you
must
have something. A slice of apple pie and a nice wedge of Lancashire cheese?’

‘I am not hungry.’

The slow, barely controlled delivery of his words convinced Daisy that he was more angry than she had ever believed Joshua could be. When he turned round at last she saw the coldness in his eyes.

‘You think I should have gone with Florence to the hospital. That’s it, isn’t it?’ She shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘Oh, Joshua … I can’t … I can’t be all things to all men. Isn’t that what they say? I thought something dreadful had happened to Jimmy till you walked in with him; I was late, my visitors were waiting, and Florence was cross with me because I’d left her to cope with the meal. I
should
have gone with her to the hospital. It’s just that
you
were there and I knew that you would look after her.’

‘Good old Joshua!’ There was such a wealth of bitterness in his voice that she flinched.

‘I’ve gone down in your estimation, haven’t I?’

Joshua folded his arms, averting his eyes from the red mark on her neck. Let her believe that failing to take Florence to the hospital was the cause of his anger if she wanted to. Let her think anything, but let him get to hell out of the house before he took her in his arms and shook her, or slapped her face. Or kissed her.

‘I’m glad you found Jimmy, Joshua.’ Daisy struggled to make things right between them. ‘Sam and I were worried to death about him running off like that.’ The despised blush betrayed her again. ‘We were talking, and Jimmy must have got bored.’

‘So bored that he wandered alone to the very end of the pier, to the far end of the jetty, a little lad on his own. Crying his heart out.’

‘Crying?’ Daisy put a hand to her mouth. ‘Why should he be crying?’

‘I should imagine you and Sam know the answer to that.’

Joshua walked towards the door. He could no longer stand there watching the changing expressions on Daisy’s face. Now she was looking bewildered and contrite. Before, when she had first come into the kitchen, she had looked dazed, as if she wasn’t quite sure what was going on around her. He ached to hold her in his arms and yet he needed to humiliate her. He was no longer in control of his own emotions.

‘Bobbie’s been arrested,’ she said from behind him.

‘
What
did you say?’ He turned round and closed the door. ‘Bobbie’s been
arrested
?’

‘For stealing from shops; for breaking into houses late at night on his way back from the dancing. The stuff was hidden in a trunk in his room.’

‘I’m going for a bit of a blow. Coming with me, Daisybell?’ Sam put his head round the door. ‘So you’re back, Joshua. Hope the damage wasn’t too bad, but Florence is one tough lady. She’s not going to let a scalded foot upset her too much.’

‘Two scalded feet.’

Sam looked from Joshua’s set face to Daisy’s flushed one.

‘Look here, old chap, I haven’t had the chance to thank you for finding Jimmy and bringing him back, but he’s old enough to know better than to run off like that. Used to make a habit of it at one time, running away, but I thought he’d grown out of it.’ He did a little shuffle with his own two feet as if he couldn’t wait to get away himself. ‘Coming, Daisybell? Joshua will stay with Jimmy for half an hour or so, won’t you, old chap?’

‘I can’t come with you,’ Daisy said.

‘Sorry, but I have to go out,’ Joshua said. ‘Right away. Sorry.’

‘What’s the matter with
him
?’ Sam asked. ‘Sure you won’t come with me, Daisybell?’

Mrs Mac said she had bumped into that nice Mr Penny haring off one way down the street, and that young lad’s father haring off in the other direction. Sitting down heavily on a kitchen chair, she said that her ankles came up like balloons about this time, and that what with all the upset, everything she’d eaten for her tea was talking back at her.

‘It’s bad news about Miss Livesey,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to tell me. I can recognize bad news at less than spitting distance. Your Mr Penny had a face on him as long as a wet weekend. Scalds can take bad ways.’

‘Florence is going to be fine,’ Daisy said quickly, ‘but it’s not good about Mr Schofield. That policeman had come to arrest him.’

‘What for?’ All sorts of interesting possibilities occurred. Mrs Mac’s nostrils dilated like an animal scenting the unknown. ‘Don’t tell me he’s the Talbot Square flasher?’

‘No, but it’s bad enough,’ Daisy said, knowing that to try to keep the news from Mrs Mac would be impossible. Wanting her to hear the truth before it was made worse by exaggeration.

‘It’s all that dancing.’ Mrs Mac’s neck was so non-existent her face seemed to rise from her high-necked blouse as from an Elizabethan ruff. ‘He was bound to meet the wrong type at all those dances. But he was clean, you have to say that for him. Mrs Entwistle used to say it was a shame to send his towels to the laundry – there wasn’t a mark on them.’

‘I ought to go to the police station to find out what’s happening to him.’ Daisy wished Sam had stayed behind instead of striding off like that for a bit of a blow on the front. He didn’t like unpleasantness, she didn’t need to be told that, but going out had made him seem uncaring and unkind. ‘But I can’t leave the house, not with the visitors due back from the pictures and Jimmy to think about.’ She sat down at the table, lacing her fingers together. ‘It’s all going wrong for me, Mrs
Mac
, an’ I thought I had it organized so well that nothing could spoil it.’ Her expression was as serene as ever, but her eyes pleaded for reassurance. ‘I don’t know what to do, Mrs Mac. I’m going to
try
to manage on me own, but will I be able to? Do
you
think I can?’

‘With every room filled? Just one pair of hands to cook and clean and fetch the shopping and see to the beds?’

Little Miss Bell was so put down, so out of her depth, Mrs Mac forgot all her jealous annoyance at the sight of the obviously new copper-bottomed pans hanging in a row, starting at the smallest one and working up to one big enough to boil a pig’s head in. Besides, little Miss Bell was one thing, that long-nosed friend of hers was another. Not a finger would she have lifted to help
her
.

‘I read in the paper there could be over seventy thousand vehicles coming into the town over the weekend,’ she said, giving herself time to think. ‘And it’ll get worse when they open the Talbot Road Bus Station. We’ll be sleeping them four to a bed. They make out there’s no money about but it’s like I always say where the unemployed are concerned. Show me a picture of one of them in the paper without a fag stuck to his bottom lip, and I’ll show you one of my old man setting off with a smile on his face to do an honest day’s work. It was the same in the miners’ strike. They always managed to find the necessary twopence for five Woodbines or half a pint of beer. Yes, I think I
do
know of a girl who could help out temporary-like. She’s got a slate or two missing, they say, but she’s clean and willing. Her mother comes in and does the morning’s rough at San Remo next door to me.’

‘You mean she’s. …’ Daisy didn’t know how to put it delicately. She felt she could be going slightly mad herself with her thoughts tangoing off in all directions. Some to the big piece of brisket she was going to stuff and roll for the special welcome dinner she had in mind for Saturday night, fried plaice being the only possible thing with tomorrow being Good Friday. Worried thoughts about Florence lying alone in the hospital with her blistered toes pointing to the
ceiling
. Sympathetic thoughts with Bobbie down at the police station. Would they have him locked away in a cell without his braces and his packet of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes? She’d often wondered how he could afford to smoke those – now she suspected that he probably helped himself to them when the tobacconist’s back was turned. And miserable thoughts about Sam leaving for London in the morning.