Daisy's Wars

by Meg Henderson

  ‘In Heaton, now,’ Daisy replied, ‘in Guildford Place.’

  ‘My sister lives in Guildford Place! What a coincidence, and what a difference a mile up the road can make, can’t it? Well, that’s settled then.’ Mrs Johnstone got up and glided gracefully out through the door as Daisy followed. She put Daisy in the lift, pressed the button for the ground floor and closed the two gates. ‘I’ll see you on Monday morning, Daisy,’ she called. ‘And don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.’

  Daisy walked out of Fenwicks in a daze, marvelling at how good life could be when you least expected it, smiling as she passed the old woman she had first spoken to, and then smiling all the way home to Guildford Place. Once she was back home she changed out of her best clothes and set about catching up with her chores. She opened up the fire, she’d banked up with dross before she had gone out and coaxed it into flame again. She finished the family washing, started the evening meal, and only then did Kathleen awake.

  Michael came home first; he was on early shift these days. Then Kay arrived with Dessie, who seemed to spend more time in the Sheridan house than in his own. Daisy set out the evening meal and listened as the others went over the events of their day, saying nothing herself. When she had cleared away the dishes she deliberately left them on the draining board and closed the door before returning to the family. She knew that if she started washing them Dessie would offer to dry them. It earned him the praise of Kathleen and Michael, but Daisy knew he used his offer of help as a means of legitimately brushing against her as often as possible in the small space. Out of necessity she had learned to think ahead, to block every move before it happened.

  Dessie looked up.

  ‘Not washing the dishes, then, Daisy?’ he asked, grinning at her.

  ‘I don’t feel like it,’ she replied casually. ‘I’ll do them later.’

  ‘Well, if you’re fed-up washing, I’ll do it and you can dry?’ he offered.

  He never gives up! she thought grimly.

  ‘If you’re that keen you can wash and dry,’ she suggested calmly, and the others laughed. Dessie laughed, too, but he didn’t take up her suggestion.

  Didn’t think you would! she said to herself, sitting on the single stool beside the fire because then he couldn’t move beside her.

  ‘I have some news for you that might change your mood,’ he said, still grinning.

  You’re running away to sea? she thought hopefully.

  ‘I’ve arranged for you to see one of the managers at the works.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, staring into the fire.

  ‘I’ve fixed you up with a job, of course,’ he bragged. ‘I don’t think you’ll have any bother.’

  Kathleen and Michael made ‘oooh’ noises, as though Daisy had been presented with the greatest prize in the world.

  She waited for silence. ‘I’ve already got a job, thanks,’ she said evenly, and the tone of the silence changed.

  ‘What job?’ her father asked.

  ‘In Fenwicks. I start on Monday.’

  ‘Fenwicks?’ Michael asked, as though he had never heard the word before. ‘You mean the one in Northumberland Street?’

  ‘There is only one, Da,’ she smiled.

  ‘So when did this happen?’ Michael asked.

  ‘What does it matter when it happened?’ Daisy shrugged. ‘I’ve got a job there and, I start on Monday.’

  ‘A job doing what?’ Dessie demanded.

  ‘Anything they want me to do,’ she said without looking at him.

  ‘Well, that’s a bit of a turn-up when you knew Dessie was putting in a word for you!’ Michael accused.

  ‘I didn’t ask him to put in a word for me; I didn’t say he could!’

  ‘But it was understood,’ Kathleen wheezed.

  ‘Not by me it wasn’t,’ Daisy returned tartly. ‘I’m not Kay, he doesn’t rule my life!’

  ‘Daisy!’ Michael said. ‘That’s no way to talk! Dessie was doing you a favour.’

  Daisy straightened up and looked directly at Dessie. ‘Was he?’ she said flatly. ‘Well, I don’t need his favours, I’ve got a job and that’s that.’

  Lying in her bed that night she heard the usual backdrop to night-time in the Sheridan household. Downstairs her mother breathed in her tortured way and upstairs Kay snored gently. Nothing disturbed Kay’s sleep: she didn’t seem to dream and wakened each morning in the same position she had gone to sleep in – a skill, if it was a skill, that Daisy had always envied.

  She thought over how they had greeted her news. From Kay there was no response, but that was Kay, she had no opinions; and from her parents there had been something like disapproval. She lay in the darkness trying to analyse the feelings in the room when she had announced that she had found a job on her own.

  The disapproval, resentment even, hadn’t just been because kindly Dessie’s good word had been thrown back in his face. It was more than that, it was because she was going to work in Fenwicks. Her parents saw her as getting above her station in life, she realised. The very people who complained about anti-Irish prejudice holding them back objected to her getting on. Why was that? she wondered. Because if one of them got on it proved that it was possible for all of them? It undermined their cherished victim status? Well, they could keep that; she had no intention of living her life as a victim, being grateful and resentful in equal measure for whatever crumbs those above threw down to her. For a start, she thought furiously, she didn’t accept that those above had that power, and, even if they did, she wouldn’t put up with it in future, in her future. And as for Ireland, the fabled Emerald Isle their hearts ached for generation after generation, well it was someone else’s country as far as she was concerned and she longed to be free of it too.

  In the future she now planned for herself, she decided, neither the place her family still referred to as ‘home’, nor Newcastle, would have any claim on her. Granny Niamh would have applauded her, she knew that, and Aunt Clare would have cheered her on, but no one else in her family had that kind of mind. She’d been aware of that for a long time, from when she had first started to question her father’s stories; from the time, in fact, when she had begun to think for herself.

  And Dessie? Well, Dessie understood perfectly well why she had done what she had done, and Dessie didn’t like it. She knew that from the look in his eyes as she had met his gaze for that fleeting defiant second. It had taken him by surprise so he had no time to think up a reply, and that night he had left the Sheridan home early. She had shaken him off and he’d gone home early, so she had scored a double victory, and the thought warmed her.

  But being young, Daisy didn’t know that there were as many male reactions as there were males. She had misread Dessie that night. She thought she had beaten him at last, and she had no way of understanding the difference between battles and wars. In Daisy a different female had emerged from the union between Michael and Kathleen, as had happened in the family in the past, and lying in her bed in the Guildford Place house she was filled with optimism and ambition. There were no doubts, no threats to cloud her horizon, at least none that she was aware of, because she was young.

  5

  Fenwicks became Daisy’s refuge in the years that followed. She lived for and through her job, and even if Mrs Johnstone was true to her words, and made her work hard, it became work she loved.

  On her first day, though, it was clear that the word had got round. She could tell that from the stares of a few of the old dears, no doubt tipped off by Miss Manders. She glanced at them as she made her way to the rickety lift that would take her to Joan Johnstone’s office. Their lips were set in disapproving straight lines. She knew why they disliked her, of course. These women of a certain age didn’t take kindly to competition that beat them hands down, and in their eyes, just by being young, attractive and from the wrong part of town, Daisy had beaten them. Maybe there was a trace of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bias in there too. That was something you never knew about unless they spat in
your face, but the Newcastle Irish had what they regarded as a sixth sense about such things, although Daisy wondered if it was also a kind of paranoia. Anyway, none of it had anything to do with her. She couldn’t help her background nor her shape – if only she could! As her hand reached out to press the lift button, Miss Manders said behind her, ‘You’re expected down here to sweep the floor.’

  ‘I was told to report to Mrs Johnstone,’ Daisy said.

  ‘Well, do that,’ the older woman replied tersely, ‘then you’re expected back down here right away. Is that understood? You’re only a junior, that’s what juniors do.’

  Daisy nodded. ‘Miserable old cow!’ she said to herself once the lift gates had clanged shut, but as she ascended she could feel her mood doing the same.

  Mrs Johnstone was behind her desk, a tiny, bright presence set against dark woodwork and piles of paper. She indicated with a gracious hand movement that Daisy should sit down.

  ‘Now, Daisy,’ she said quietly, ‘what I have in mind is to teach you the business. I want you to see yourself where I am now in a few years, or even beyond. How would you like to be working in one of the big Paris fashion houses?’

  She giggled and Daisy giggled too.

  ‘But first you have to work your way up, as I explained. Now there’s one thing you’ll learn about me, and that’s that I hate paperwork.’

  Daisy looked around. She’d never have guessed.

  ‘I do it, of course, because I have to or it would overwhelm me.’ She followed Daisy’s gaze and laughed. ‘You’re thinking that it already has, aren’t you?’

  ‘No …’

  Mrs Johnstone clapped her hands and laughed again. ‘What I’d like you to do is help me keep it all in better order. I know it doesn’t look as though it’s in any order now, but it is, believe it or not.’ She looked around, shaking her head. ‘Now, that pile there, it needs to be properly filed, you know? It should be to some extent already, well, roughly, but if you could make sure it’s by date, strictly by date, that would be a great help. Now, I have a client to see to, so off you go, walk around the store first, familiarise yourself, and come back to my paperwork.’

  They travelled down in the lift together and when they reached the ground floor went in different directions. Before Daisy had gone two steps she was stopped by Miss Manders.

  ‘I want the stockroom floor sweeping,’ she said shortly. ‘There’s a brush behind there.’

  Daisy said nothing, but turned from the splendour of the shopfront towards the dark dinginess of the stockroom and started brushing. It was an impossible job; there was an endless supply of dust and fluff that seemed to elude every pass of the brush and land exactly where it had been before.

  Miss Manders reappeared. ‘You’re not doing much of a job, are you?’ she asked, before turning and disappearing again. Half an hour of useless brushing later, Miss Manders reappeared with seemingly no interest in whether the floor was dust and fluff free, and proffered a bottle of bleach, sniffily instructing Daisy to clean the staff toilet.

  Daisy stood thinking for a moment. The only thing stopping her from telling Miss Manders precisely where to put her bottle of bleach and walking out was the thought of the alternative. ‘Ropeworks, Daisy,’ she said to herself, ‘ropeworks’, though she knew there was no telling how long that thought would hold her.

  Just then she heard Mrs Johnstone’s voice in the distance, then she burst in through the door. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, though by the wretched look on Miss Manders’ face as she followed, Mrs Johnstone already knew. ‘Didn’t I tell you to file the paperwork in my office?’

  Daisy didn’t reply, sensing that Mrs Johnstone’s anger wasn’t directed at her, and looked behind her to the older woman.

  ‘Miss Manders,’ Mrs Johnstone said tightly, ‘can we please have a word? Daisy, if you would be so good as to go up to my office and I’ll see you there in due course.’

  Daisy made her way through the sudden silence of the stockroom, past the even louder silence of the shop floor and the cold stares of all the Miss Manderses who watched her, and went through the lift procedure that seemed to take forever before it actually moved. She wasn’t entirely sure what would happen, but she couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. She wasn’t to blame for what the old cow had made her do, but Mrs Johnstone had told her to look around the store and return to her office. She should have done that, she realised. Now she could be out on her ear and on her way to joining Dessie’s harem after all. But if the old cow had complained to Mrs Johnstone that she had refused to do as she was told by her elders, if not betters, she could have been out on her ear anyhow.

  When ‘in due course’ arrived, Mrs Johnstone came into the office and sat down.

  ‘Well, that’s that all sorted,’ she said brightly.

  Daisy looked at her blankly.

  ‘Well, don’t just sit there, girl, get on with my filing!’ She suddenly laughed. ‘On second thoughts, let’s have a cuppa and biscuit, what do you say?’

  ‘So I’ve still got a job?’ Daisy asked, surprised.

  ‘Well of course you have! Whatever made you think you hadn’t?’

  ‘The old, um, Miss Manders,’ Daisy mumbled.

  ‘Oh,’ Mrs Johnstone said with a dismissive wave of her hand, ‘that was all a misunderstanding. My fault really, I should’ve explained to the other ladies that you weren’t to be treated as a normal junior. I have something different in mind for you: you are to be my assistant. I should’ve explained that to the ladies on the shop floor,’ she repeated briskly, if unconvincingly. ‘It was my mistake, but they understand now.’

  Daisy lowered her head to hide a grin.

  ‘I do hope you’re not smirking, Daisy!’ Mrs Johnstone said. ‘Because I would expect better from you. It wouldn’t be lady-like to gloat over the old, um, Miss Manders, you know!’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that,’ Daisy said, laughing despite her best intentions. She looked up and as they met each other’s eyes they both laughed out loud.

  Mrs Johnstone sat back in her chair, rubbing her chest. ‘She really is an old cow, isn’t she?’ she said breathlessly, now dabbing at her eyes. ‘I’m sure you’ve met a lot like her, Daisy. I have, too. You won’t get any more trouble like that, but I fear you’ll always be regarded as my favourite and that won’t help you make friends here. Does that bother you?’

  Daisy shook her head. The fact was that it honestly didn’t. She was a loner; she had always been a loner, partly because the life she had been given had made her one by separating her from girls of her own age, and partly because of her own nature – and that was before Mother Nature had aided and abetted the process by giving her a body and looks other women would have died for, and would have killed her for as well. All her life she had had to take on responsibilities beyond her years; maybe it was her destiny to always be older than her years, too.

  She soon fell into a routine with Mrs Johnstone, who already had her own highly personal system of keeping track of pieces of paper that worked for her; but gradually Daisy brought an order to the office that even her boss fell into without noticing. She also made the tea, kept track of stock and learned how to use the telephone, an instrument of mystery to someone of Daisy’s background, and, even more daunting, how to modulate her strong Geordie accent while doing so.

  ‘You’re not betraying your background, if that’s what you’re thinking!’ Mrs Johnstone would tease her. ‘You’ll still have your own voice, but you’ll have another as well that will make it easier to converse with people who don’t have Geordie.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Daisy grimaced. ‘What has my background ever done for me that I owe it any loyalty? It’s just that I think I sound like such a fraud that the people on the other end will know and they’ll laugh at me.’

  ‘Daisy,’ Joan said, staring at her with wide eyes and smiling, ‘they’re doing just the same as you! Everyone puts on an act of some kind for other people, doesn’t matter who the
y are!’

  Daisy worked in ladies’ fashions, a man-free environment where she could relax, gradually being introduced to the well-heeled ladies of the area as they came in for fittings, seeing their fine clothes and the ones they left with, which were even finer. From Mrs Johnstone she learned that fashion wasn’t just about wearing something nice, but it was affected by what was happening in the world at any given time. In Daisy’s own life-time the Flappers of the 1920s had caused a mini revolution when they threw away their Victorian corsets – torture garments reinforced with whalebone, tightly laced to give fashionably narrow waists of fifteen or eighteen inches.

  ‘But I really like the dresses in these old pictures,’ Daisy said, flicking through a magazine of the Victorian era. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ Mrs Johnstone screeched. ‘I can’t even look at them without thinking of women in torture! My mother wasn’t rich, but as a young girl she had a waist of seventeen inches, can you imagine that?’ She shook her head and tut-tutted. ‘No woman was intended to be that shape, and the tightness of the corsets made them deformed. They couldn’t breathe and couldn’t move, and I’ve heard they were so tight that the marks of their ribs were imprinted on their lungs underneath, can you imagine that? Then on top they wore layers of slips, vests, bodices, knickers, and stockings as well, and those heavy floor-length dresses with bustles.’ She shook her head. ‘It was all a trick, of course.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, they were trussed up, weren’t they? Which meant they couldn’t move, so they had to stay at home, delicate flowers who had to be cared for and kept away from the world; but it kept them from taking their place in the world, didn’t it? Because the world belonged then, as it still does, to men – only a little less now, thanks in part to the Flappers.’