A Better World than This (9 page)

‘After I’ve made you a pot of tea, will it be all right if I pop round to see Betty and the baby?’ Daisy asked Edna in some desperation. ‘I won’t stop long.’

‘Your Daisy must feel a bit put down,’ she distinctly heard Edna say as she stood by the stove waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘Our Betty, bless her, having a baby before her twenty-first. She’d make a lovely mother would your Daisy, and I
hope
I don’t speak out of turn, Martha, but it was a crying shame she had to go and meet a man who already had a wife and family.’

‘There’s time enough yet for her to have children of her own,’ Martha said in a scolding tone. ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer, you know, our Edna.’

Leaving them sipping their tea, Daisy went out the back way and up the street to Edna’s house. What she expected to see she didn’t quite know, but new mothers in films always seemed to be lying flat in bed with sweat-sticky hair, and eyes still dazed with pain after what they’d been through. Betty, however, was pinkly clean, her fair slippery hair held back with a wide tortoiseshell slide.

‘I’ve brought you a pair of white turkish towels for the baby.’ Daisy handed over a large paper bag. ‘Boring but practical. Your mother says you have enough matinée jackets and bootees to set up a shop.’ She lowered her voice in deference to the snuffling noises coming from a muslin-draped treasure cot. ‘I’m really happy for you, Betty. Your mother’s as chuffed as if she’d had him herself.’

‘It’s all been a great strain for her,’ Betty said seriously. ‘She told me she felt every pain.’ Raising both arms high above her head she lowered them quickly. ‘Me mam says I mustn’t do that till everything’s gone back.’ She examined a creeping stain on the front of her nightdress. ‘See that? Me milk’s coming through already.’

Daisy averted her eyes, then immediately felt old-maidish and prudish. ‘Your mother’s talking about putting him on the bottle, but I expect she was just, you know, giving her own opinion.’

‘Oh, no. Me mam says she’s seen too many girls go to nothing with struggling to breast-feed. You know, the baby getting all the nourishment while they go to shadows.’

Meeting her cousin’s limpid gaze Daisy had the uneasy feeling that there was nothing but an empty void behind the round blue eyes; that Betty was merely an echo, receiving her mother’s ideas and repeating them parrot fashion.
Questioning
nothing, accepting all. She was prepared to believe that Betty hadn’t a wrong thought in her head; the problem was were there any original thoughts there at all? Florence dismissed Betty as a
sponge
. Could she be right? The heat of the day and her own sense of frustration were curdling her tongue:

‘But what do
you
want to do, Betty? Breast-feeding’s certainly cheaper, and there aren’t any bottles to boil up. What does Cyril want you to do?’

‘Him?’ Betty dismissed her husband with a shrug. ‘Men know nowt about that kind of thing. Whatever me and me mam decide to do will be all right with Cyril.’

The baby was crying now, a thin spluttery wail. Betty checked the time on a round alarm clock on the bedside table. ‘You can pick him up if you want. The midwife’s due any time now. She won’t mind.’

Daisy looked down at a small red angry face surrounded by a cocoon of blankets. The eyes were kitten’s eyes, blind slits above cheeks so roundly fat they could have been blown up by a bicycle pump.

‘Support his head,’ Betty said from the bed, but Daisy needed no telling.

With instinctive and age-old tenderness she lifted the baby, holding him in her arms as if her whole life had been a long preparation for just this moment. He fitted the crook of her elbow as if he’d been fashioned for it; when she rocked him to and fro he opened his eyes a fraction; when she held him closer his mouth champed on nothing with little sucking noises.

‘Oh, you precious darling. You little love. …’ Daisy’s bad mood vanished. ‘What are you going to call him?’

‘Me mam likes John.’ Betty held out her arms for her son. ‘Or Edwin, our grandpa’s name. She quite likes Edwin. That’s the midwife at the door. You’d best go, Daisy. Thank you for the towels.’

‘Daisy feels she’s missed the boat,’ Betty told herself, smiling at the squat little figure in hot navy-blue serge
bustling
through the door. ‘I saw it on her face when she held the baby.’

‘That was me cousin,’ she explained. ‘She’s fetched me some white towels, though me mam says we’ve enough to set up a shop. Still, the thought was there, wasn’t it?’

Arnold was in the lobby when Daisy reached the foot of the stairs.

‘He’s beautiful.’ On a sudden impulse Daisy kissed her uncle’s cheek. ‘Congratulations, Grandpa. I think he has a look of you. I mean it. I really do.’

‘Well, he’s bald enough.’ Arnold rubbed the top of his head, pleased as punch. ‘You’re looking a bit off, chuck. It’s all wrong you should be cooped up with your mother on a day like this. It’s not like you to be so pale.’

‘Pale, but interesting, I hope,’ Daisy said, quick as a lick, running off down the street and going in through the back way into her own house.

‘There aren’t many people live in this town, Dad. Are there, Dad?’

Sam Barnet looked down at his son. At six and a half Jimmy was much too old to hold his father’s hand, but on Sam’s other side a small girl clung tightly, treading pigeon-toed in a scuffed pair of brown sandals.

‘It’s what they call Wakes Week up here,’ Sam explained, crossing the road by Woolworth’s with the feeling he had wandered into a ghost town. ‘That means holiday time, when people go away. If they can afford to.’

‘I don’t like it, Dad.’ Jimmy’s tiredness showed in the hoarseness of his voice. ‘It’s a horrible place.’

‘My feet hurt, Dad.’ The small girl stopped suddenly and lifted up her arms. ‘Carry me, Dad.’

Bare arms wound themselves round Sam’s neck as he swung his daughter on to his back for a piggy ride.

‘Hitler’s fight is for the peace of the world,’ Jimmy read out loud from a torn and wire-meshed placard outside a
newsagent’s
shop, pronouncing each word laboriously. ‘Who is Hitler, Dad?’

‘A man in charge of a country called Germany.’ The child was heavy and Sam wondered how he was going to buy new sandals when it seemed that every single shop had closed down.

‘Like the King, Dad?’

‘Not quite, son.’ Sam broke into a trot, jigging the little girl up and down. ‘Nearly there, love. Nearly there.’

‘Like a prime minister, then?’ Jimmy stared up into his father’s face. ‘You look hot, Dad, and your nose is sweating.’ The neb of his school cap hid the expression in his eyes. ‘Why are we knocking at this door when the shop’s closed and there’s nothing in the window? They’ll have gone on holiday. I bet they’ll have gone on holiday, Dad.’

‘Possibly,’ Sam said, setting the child down and knocking again. ‘Now remember your manners,’ he whispered, hearing footsteps approaching from behind the door and the sound of a bolt being drawn. ‘Not too many questions, mind.’

Waiting on the pavement for the door to be opened, they stood close together in the early evening of that hot July day: two children, the boy as dark as the girl was fair, both bearing a marked resemblance to their father, a handsome man in grey flannels, with the collar of his sports shirt laid neatly over his jacket.

‘Look what the wind’s blown in!’

Edna took them through the shop into the back room, the wrinkled cheeks of her monkey face pushed up into little cushions of triumph with the force of her delighted smile. To think she might have gone and missed
this
, her expression said, her beady eyes noticing the way the colour drained away from Daisy’s face as she jumped up from her chair, scattering book and bookmark across the cut rug.

‘Sam! Oh, Sam. …’

For one startled moment Sam thought Daisy was going to kiss him, but she recovered quickly, crouching down to smile into the children’s faces.

‘Jimmy and Dorothy.’ Sam made the introductions with fatherly pride. ‘My boss let me bring them along for the ride. School holidays,’ he explained.

‘Our mother has gone to France. On business with her boss.’ Jimmy’s face went red with importance. ‘France is too far for children.’

‘Of course it is,’ Daisy said at once, holding out a hand to Dorothy who hung her head and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

‘She’s shy,’ Jimmy explained. ‘Just at first.’

‘Well, you’d best all sit down.’ Martha was on her dignity, determined not to let her sister sense her agitation. ‘My word, but you’re two little grand’uns.’ Her warm and natural love for children brought a brightness to her eyes. ‘Do you know, I’ve just remembered. I’ve got a tin of gingerbread men in the kitchen. With currants for eyes. And some lemonade.’ Pushing herself up from her chair with difficulty, she stood up. ‘Want to come with me and see if I’ve remembered right?’

‘We’ve got a new baby at our house. New born. This very morning.’ Edna’s beady eyes had softened. ‘I bet you’ve never seen one as new as that.’

‘Is it a white one or a black one?’ Colour-conscious since discovering
Little Black Sambo
, Dorothy forgot her shyness enough to ask.

‘You have to be born in
Africa
to be black.’ Jimmy’s voice dripped scorn as they followed Martha and Edna out of the room. Remembering his cap, he snatched it off, holding it to his chest as they disappeared through the door.

‘How beautiful they are.’ Daisy stared at Sam. Her lips moved as if she was going to say something, then she fell silent again, pleating and repleating the folds of her striped cotton skirt.

‘Well, Daisy?’ Sam seemed equally at a loss for words. The shock of seeing Martha so changed was still with him. Six months ago she had been full-busted, with high-piled vigorous hair, and now the shadow of sickness had fallen on her like a grey mantle. Daisy too had lost weight, and there
was
a bruised look about her eyes as if she was sleeping badly. ‘This is the first chance I’ve had to come up here.’ He spoke stiffly, hating the necessity for explanation, regretting the impulse that had brought him straight from the uncomfortable sparseness of his digs to the little shop. The very atmosphere was choking him. Outside the street was still warm, golden-tinted from the summer sun. But in here a high-banked fire threw out an overpowering heat, the coals glowing like lava, washing the stippled walls to apricot and bringing the sweat out on his forehead.

‘I’m in the district for two days,’ he said too heartily. ‘The boss knew I was in a spot and said I could bring the children if I kept them out of his way. He knows how I’m placed,’ he added stiffly. As if he had said too much, he put up a hand to shield his face from the fire. ‘He’s not a bad sort. He has four children of his own.’

‘He sounds nice.’

‘Jewish. Family-minded.’

‘I see.’

‘We can go and see the baby!’ Jimmy’s head appeared round the door, black hair almost standing on end in his excitement. ‘It’s only that big.’ Two hands were spread to demonstrate, one holding a sticky gingerbread man. He bit off a leg. ‘It’s only just born!’

‘We won’t be long, Mr Barnet.’ Martha was animated almost out of recognition. ‘I haven’t seen it myself.’

‘Your mother is ill.’ Sam waited until he heard the back door bang to. He leaned forward, his face serious and intent. ‘Couldn’t you have gone away? The whole town seems to have disappeared.’

‘She won’t go.’ Daisy stared down at her feet, then pushed them underneath her chair as she realized she was wearing her bedroom slippers. ‘She just sits.’ Her head lifted and he thought he saw the glisten of tears in her eyes. ‘You saw how she was before. The doctor stopped her working and that seems to have done for her. Florence says that now her motivation for living has gone she’s just given up.’

‘Florence?’

‘My friend.’

Sam got up and moved to a stand-chair by the table. Away from the fire. The sadness was getting to him. It seemed to be coming at him from the stippled walls. He had decided that he would bring the children, say hello, and go away. He didn’t like unfinished business and there had been something definitely unfinished about his last visit. For a moment he saw Daisy as he had left her, on the Boulevard in the rain, wet hair dripping round her face. She had spoiled his lonely Christmas lunch, dammit, appearing before him in his mind, holding out her hands, as if he belonged to her. And he wasn’t a cruel man. His wife said he was, but he knew he wasn’t.

‘I have a job to keep!’ he had shouted, when she handed the children over to him. ‘If I lose my job, then we’re both in the cart.’

‘My heart bleeds,’ she had said, but she’d turned back and kissed them, before she walked away.

He glared at Daisy. As if it was her fault. Then he smiled. Why not? Why not, indeed?

‘The boss is going up to Scotland tomorrow, staying the night in Glasgow, with Mr Bleasdale from the mill. Using his car and his driver.’ The grin widened. ‘So …? He’s said I can take the kids with me for a ride in the Rolls, so why don’t you come with us? To the seaside. To that Blackpool you told me about. Why not, Daisy?’

‘Because I can’t leave me mother.’ Daisy’s reaction was immediate. ‘I can’t expect Auntie Edna to stay with her, not with the baby just born. And she certainly can’t be left on her own.’

‘Why not, for God’s sake?’ Sam realized they were both shouting. He lowered his voice. ‘You can leave her for just one day, surely?’

Daisy shook her head. ‘She scalded her hand the other week trying to make herself a cup of tea. She’s lost her balance, Sam. She would fall over putting coal on the fire.’

‘She doesn’t
need
a fire!’ Sam’s voice rose again. ‘Not in the
middle
of a bloody heatwave.’ He fingered his nose and found it was sweating, just as Jimmy had said. ‘Are you telling me you’re tied to this house? That you never go out? Never?’

‘To the pictures. Only when she’s safely in bed.’

‘Then we’ll take her with us. That suit you?’ He was laughing, not irritated. Surprising himself.

‘She won’t come,’ Daisy said. ‘You can ask her, but I know what she’ll say.’

Martha was ready a good hour before the time. She was brighter than she had been for months, pale and resolute in her beige linen coat, with the veil on her hat hanging down over her eyes. Beneath the coat she wore a brown and white flowered dress, with a lace modesty vest pinned into the V with two small gold safety-pins. Already her ankles were flowing over the tops of her patent bar-strap shoes, bulging at the sides where they had spread to accommodate her bunions.