They sank down on to the settee and Daisy undid her blouse and slipped out of it. Stanley undid her bra and it fell away, revealing her firm young breasts. He felt her nipples harden and brought his lips down to taste her. The scent of Evening in Paris inflamed his senses and he knew he should draw away and leave right now.
Daisy had other ideas. She undid the clasp of his webbing belt and the buttons of his trousers. She had thought long and hard about what she was going to do. She wanted to give Stanley something to remember when he went back to Germany, and memories to help her through the next year, too. She felt the iron hardness of his erection and her insides melted with an unbearable ache.
‘Oh, God, Daisy. Are you sure about this?’ Stanley removed his jerkin and fumbled with his shoes and trousers. The touch of Daisy’s hand was almost more than he could bear. Now she knew what Carol and Jean had meant by being carried away!
Sally had heard the front door being closed, and the whispering voices, then the silence. She was lying rigid, waiting for the sound of Daisy’s feet on the stairs, but everything was so quiet. She had seen the way things were developing through Stanley’s leave. She had noticed the new underwear, more fancy than Daisy had ever bought before. It wasn’t that Sally didn’t trust her daughter, or Stanley, it was just that she could remember her own courtship. Besides, with all the scrapes Daisy had landed herself in over the years, Sally wouldn’t put it past her to land herself in the family way, too. Well, she wasn’t going to lie here while that happened.
Sally jumped out of bed and stamped out on to the landing, switching on the light and coughing loudly.
‘Bloody ’ell!’ Stanley had just succeeded in untangling his trousers from his shoes. Now he became even more tangled as he rushed to get them on again. Daisy struggled with her blouse and hid her bra under the cushion. She hurried to switch on the light, expecting her mother to barge in at any moment.
Sally saw the light go on, and coughed again, then she went back to bed. She didn’t mean to be a spoilsport, she just wanted to protect her daughter. She guessed their ardour would have been cooled now, for tonight at least.
‘I could kill her!’ Daisy fumed, then she grinned. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve grown a bit since I last saw your you know what?’
Stanley fastened his buttons. ‘I’d better go, she’ll be listening for the door.’ He drew Daisy towards him then and kissed her passionately. ‘Better luck next time,’ he said huskily. ‘Oh, and by the way?’
‘What?’
‘What happened to those school knickers?’
Daisy pushed him towards the door. If what had happened tonight was a taste of things to come, she didn’t mind waiting. Stan wasn’t just a quick thrill, like Jean had described, he was for life.
Sally finally heard the door close and settled down to sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS DAISY’S twenty-first birthday but she had postponed the celebrations in favour of a much more important event. She looked around the hall at the assembled guests. There were no posh frocks or bow ties, just the ordinary people of Millington and Cragstone. Her kind of people. Fancy all these folk turning out to see her! There were members of the History and Art Societies, and a literary group from Sheffield. She could see Carol and Jean standing near the double doors, looking even more nervous than Daisy herself. No doubt Una would have been here to support her, too, had she not been basking in the limelight herself, in a theatre somewhere on the east coast. Daisy could see her mother and father, and her aunts, uncles and cousins, were all here too. Even Pat had taken a night off. The Editor of the Gazette had turned up, and Sam, no doubt hoping for an interesting column in next week’s edition.
Grand-dad Denman and Grandma were all dressed up in their Sunday best. Had he not been here, Grand-dad would have been playing the organ at the club, a pastime he had taken up in his old age in place of working on the allotment. He had even managed to persuade Grandma to accompany him to the club on Saturday nights; she and her friend Mrs Hoyle quite enjoyed watching the turns they had on, and the young folks dancing. Grandma Butler was looking smart too. Sitting beside her, Danny winked at Daisy as she caught his eye.
There were people here whom Daisy had never seen before, but most important of all, there on the front row, sitting with her brother, was Stan. He grinned at her and fingered the small velvet-covered box in his pocket. A box that held a solitaire diamond ring.
She looked over to where her parents were sitting, waiting expectantly for her to begin, and for the first time the realisation hit her. She was a novelist! Daisy Butler had always told them she would write a book, and now she had. She had not let them down. The Chairman beckoned her up on to the stage.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we come now to the main event of the evening. It isn’t often we have a published novelist in our midst. In fact, it has never happened before. However, tonight we have not only a novelist, but a local novelist – and a very young one at that. I won’t bore you any further but will let her tell you a bit about her new book, which will be in the bookshops in November. Then she has kindly offered to read an excerpt from it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Daisy Butler.’
Daisy came to the mic then.
‘Thank you so much for inviting me here tonight, it is a great honour for me. I’m not going to tell you too much about my book as I hope you will all rush out and buy a copy when it reaches the shops.’ The audience laughed at this. ‘Except I would like to say it is about the kind of people who have enriched my life so far. It’s about down-to-earth people, like my parents and grandparents. People I love very much. Now I’m going to begin at the first page,’ she said.
‘“It was just an old house, with draughty windows, creaking doors and damp on the walls. It was a haven for the lost, a refuge for the needy, a home glowing with love. Just an old house, but with an ever open door.”’ She caught her father’s eye then and smiled to see the colour in his cheeks.
‘Hey, that’s what I always say,’ he whispered to Sally. ‘I hope the cheeky young devil hasn’t written a book about us.’
Sally couldn’t answer, she had a lump in her throat as big as an egg – a hard-boiled one at that.
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Copyright © Glenice Crossland 2008
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