A Better World than This

by Marie Joseph

  ‘Do you love him?’ Florence wanted to know, stopping clattering cups and saucers on to a tray.

  Daisy flinched as if Florence had suddenly mouthed an obscenity. Her mother would never have come straight out with a question like that. It was personal, and highly offensive somehow.

  For a full half-minute they stared at each other across the kitchen table cluttered with food for Martha’s funeral spread. Both women were in deepest mourning, wearing black skirts and blouses, without a touch of colour.

  ‘Mourning went out with Queen Victoria,’ Florence had said.

  ‘Grey or navy always does quite as well,’ Daisy had said, but somehow they had borrowed, made do, and when the funeral car came for them they would emerge from the house like two black crows, determined not to show disrespect to the dead.

  Daisy tried to answer Florence’s question with honesty. She needed to talk about Sam so much the need was a physical ache inside her. But the past few days hadn’t seemed to be the time and she was never sure when Florence was laughing at her.

  ‘If thinking about him all the time,’ she said at last, ‘if seeing his face when I close my eyes, if crying about my mother then stopping and realizing with shame I am crying about him, well yes, I love him. But he won’t come back. He is scared of involvement. He had told me we wouldn’t be meeting again before … before my mother died that day.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘I thought Clark Gable at first. Then when I saw him the second time, when he was worried and concerned about the mess his own life was in, I saw he was more like Frederic March.’

  ‘As Doctor Jekyll, or Mr Hyde?’ Florence asked the question with a polite curiosity.

  ‘Oh, you’re hopeless.’ Daisy took up her knife again. ‘You’re not normal, do you know that?’

  ‘Do you mean I’m a lesbian?’ Florence looked interested in the shocking idea. ‘I suppose I may have more masculine than feminine genes, but no, I’m sure I’m quite normal, whatever normal is.’

  ‘How do you know?’ They had never talked like this before and it was Daisy’s turn to be interested now.

  ‘Because I was once in love with a married man.’ Florence marched through into the living room carrying the plate of biscuits. ‘But when I realized he would never leave his wife I saw him off.’ She came back looking fierce. ‘I expect your Sam is having a terrible time with his wife? Did he tell you she doesn’t understand him?’

  Daisy shook her head. ‘But she doesn’t. How can she? She should be helping him to get through his exams instead of gallivanting off to France with another man.’

  ‘Exams? Exams he should have passed when he’d just left school?’

  ‘Engineering exams to help him get a better job. That’s why he’s living alone in one room over a garage.’

  ‘Leaving his wife to look after the children? She deserves a filthy weekend in Paris,’ FLorence said. ‘Good luck to her, I say.’

  ‘You know nothing about it!’ Daisy attacked a tomato. ‘You pass opinions without knowing what you’re talking about.’ The knife slipped and she nicked her finger end. ‘Now you know why I didn’t tell you anything. You’d spoil the romance between Romeo and Juliet if you had the chance.’

  ‘Always did think they were a couple of pie-cans,’ Florence said, and when Edna came in without knocking she caught them giggling helplessly and rather hysterically over the funeral spread.

  The shop opened as usual on the Monday. The baker came in with calamine lotion whitening the top of his bald head where the sun had got at it in Southport, and Edna served in the shop wearing her funeral black, asking who did that Florrie Livesey think she was getting in the way and when was she going back home where she belonged?

  At half-past one Florence went to work and came back at half-past two with her cards in her handbag, saying she had got the sack and been given a week’s wages in lieu of her notice. Insisting that Daisy took every penny of it for her keep.

  At half-past three Edna marched into the bakehouse where Daisy was putting the finishing touches to a tray of mixed fancies, tore off her apron and told Daisy she wasn’t going to work alongside Florrie Livesey, not even for the sake of her dear dead sister, with whom she’d never had a cross word. ‘Told me I should be using tongs for putting the barm-cakes into the bags,’ she said. ‘As if my fingers were mucky! Who does she think she is? Tell me that! Who does she think she is?’

  The machine mixing the dough for the last batch of bread had jammed and after it was whirring again Daisy ran up the street to her aunt’s house to find Edna crying into a pile of nappies she was wringing in the kitchen sink, the sleeves of the black dress rolled up revealing arms as thin as twigs.

  ‘You’re tired out.’ Daisy closed the kitchen door against the sound of the baby screaming its head off upstairs. ‘Come on, leave those to soak and sit down for a minute. Florence can manage for a little while. It’s the quiet time just now.’

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ Edna sobbed. ‘I’m not kow-towing to that madam.’ She started to get up from her chair, resisting half-heartedly when Daisy forcibly pushed her back. ‘It’s too much trying to look after our Betty, bless her, and serving in the shop. He’s a colicky baby and had us all awake in the night. I’m fifty-four,’ she told Daisy in between sobs. ‘I can’t be doing with all this upset. I’m still getting hot flushes, you know. I’m one of those women who never come out of the change once they’ve gone into it. I can feel my heart all of a flutter today, and when I think of Martha lying dead up in the cemetery and know I’m never going to see her again. … And that madam taking her place. …’

  Daisy pulled her chair closer and took both her aunt’s red hands in her own. ‘Florence isn’t going to take anyone’s place, Auntie. She’s unsettled at the moment, and she’s company for me.’ She glanced round at the normally tidy room, festooned now with nappies steaming round the fire, with two feeding bottles on the sideboard and a large tin of Cow and Gate on the mantlepiece. ‘Of course it’s too much for you. Anyone with only half an eye can see that.’ She jiggled her aunt’s hands up and down. ‘So why don’t you stay with Betty till she’s over her fortnight lying in? You’ll be paid just the same. My mother would have insisted on that.’

  Edna’s sobs began afresh. ‘Oh, aye, she would have insisted on fair play, would my sister. Never a cross word between us all these years. She used to push me out in my pram when she was no more than a young lass, did your mother. Pure gold, that’s what she was.’

  ‘Then that’s settled then.’ Daisy leaned forward and kissed her aunt’s cheek. ‘We’re all bound to be upset; it’s only natural. The baby coming and my mother dying all in one week.’

  ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ Edna said at once, beginning to roll her sleeves down again. ‘I’ll come back now till you can set someone else on. It’s time that madam was going to her work anyway and you can’t manage on your own. It’ll be bread most of them want today with all their money gone and no pay till Friday. I know this lot round here.’

  ‘Florence isn’t going to work tonight.’ Daisy saw her auntie’s face drop a mile. ‘She’s got the sack, so there won’t be any need for me to set anyone else on. …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘So?’ Edna rolled back the sleeves and marched into the kitchen. ‘So that’s the way the wind blows, is it?’ Even her back looked affronted. ‘And I won’t be coming back at all if it’s a bit of plain speaking you want.’ She twisted a nappy round till it resembled a rope. ‘We had a talk the other day, me and our Betty, bless her. And she wants to go back to work to save for their deposit on a house, and I said I would look after the baby, if it wasn’t for you needing me at the shop. But you don’t need me – that much is obvious.’ Another nappy, another vicious twist. ‘So I hope you know what you’ve let yourself in for, because you’ll live to rue the day you opened your door to that madam. And when she’s taken you over, don’t you come running to me because I have other fish to fry!’<
br />
  Daisy put a hand to her hot forehead to find it streaked with flour. Knowing her aunt of old, she knew there was nothing she could say or do now that umbrage had been determinedly taken. Pity overwhelmed her for the spare little woman taking out her feelings on the towelling nappies, a pity mixed with exasperation. But the shop would be filling up with customers buying in for their teas; the last batch of bread and barm-cakes would be coming hot and brown from the fire-oven, and Florence hadn’t got the hang of the till as yet.

  ‘We’ll talk about all this another time,’ she said, but Edna turned on the tap to full throttle, splashing water into the sink for the second rinse, and pretended not to hear. Daisy walked back down the lobby to the sounds of the baby screaming from upstairs, and our Betty, bless her, calling down for her mother.

  Chapter Five

  THE LETTER FROM the hospital came at the end of a dismal and disappointing August, with summer sliding away into a wetter autumn. They were very sorry, the letter said, it was very remiss of them, but they had come across an envelope containing a few of Mrs Martha Bell’s effects. Would Miss Bell like them sent on, or would she prefer to pick up the small envelope personally?

  By that time Edna was ‘speaking’ again. She came into the shop instead of walking past with head averted, pushing the pram, but by that time Daisy told herself she didn’t care one way or the other.

  ‘I can’t be bothered with such pettiness,’ she said. ‘Is this to be it, for the rest of our lives?’ she asked Florence one evening as they sat together in the living room over the inevitable fire. ‘Do you realize what boring lives we lead? Some days I feel I can’t bear the sight of another meat and potato pie. I count pies instead of sheep when I can’t sleep. Do you know that?’

  ‘There aren’t any as good for miles around.’ Florence had the bakehouse cat on her lap and was stroking it contentedly with a long thin hand. ‘People come from the other side of the town for a box of your fancies.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Daisy raised dark eyebrows ceilingwards as if searching for the patience to tide her over to Florence’s next remark. ‘Well, if this is all it’s going to be till we grow old and grey, then heaven help us.’

  ‘It’s not that bad, surely?’ Florence leaned her head back against one of Martha’s embroidered antimacassars and sighed with contentment. She had entered into helping to run the shop with verve and enthusiasm, standing behind the counter wielding the tongs which had annoyed Edna so much, wearing a clean Acdo-soaked overall each day, with her hair pushed up into an equally white mob cap. She had stopped talking about spinsters and their pension rights, which she had once told Daisy should be on a parity with widows’, and her subscription to the newly-formed National Spinsters’ Pension Association had lapsed. No longer did she burn to march in protest to Hyde Park waving a banner, and Daisy had decided she wasn’t finding this new complacent Florence half as much fun.

  ‘Do you know what that awful commercial traveller trying to make us order new baking tins called us yesterday?’ In her disgruntled mood Daisy’s sense of humour had totally deserted her. ‘The Dolly Sisters! They must be forty years old at least! And he wasn’t trying to be funny either. Just because I didn’t give him an order for his flamin’ tins.’

  ‘Well, you must admit those in the bakehouse must have been around since Adam was a lad.’ Florence’s eyes sharpened with what Daisy privately called her ‘hygienic’ expression. ‘Why are they never given a proper wash? It’s disgusting.’

  ‘To scour them would ruin them.’ Daisy wondered how many times Florence would have to be told this before she believed it. ‘They’ve formed a proper surface which even hot water would ruin. Allow me to know better, Florence.’

  Daisy was wearing her round-rimmed glasses. She had been reading her library book at the same time as rolling up her fringe in pipe cleaners, hoping it would comb out with the same bounce and curl as Claudette Colbert’s the next day. ‘Why I try to look glamorous, I don’t know. There’s no Red Shadow going to come in for a box of fancies, take one look at me and carry me off to his tent in the desert. So why do I bother? Answer me that.’

  Florence pushed the cat off her lap and began her own nightly preparations. Taking the Kirby grips out of her French pleat she allowed her barley-pale hair to fall unfettered round her shoulders, as fine and silky as a child’s.

  Reminding Daisy of Dorothy’s hair; reminding her yet again of Sam. She took off her glasses quickly, as if he had suddenly materialized in a whiff of ectoplasm and caught her wearing them. She stored them away in the peeling case, and closed her book.

  ‘Are you happy, Florence? I don’t mean deliriously happy. Just day-to-day happy. Tell me honestly.’

  ‘That’s easy.’ Florence began to massage Pond’s Vanishing Cream into her long thin hands, working it well into the cuticles. ‘I ask myself every day what would have become of me if you hadn’t taken me in that night. I would never have gone back to live at home.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t have to.’ Daisy’s voice was sharp as she accepted that only her mother dying so conveniently on that very day had made it possible for Florence to move in straight away. ‘But are you happy only because you were so miserable before? That’s a mere matter of comparison. Like the feeling when you stop banging your head against a wall.’

  Florence was storing the Kirby grips all facing the same way in an old Oxo tin. ‘When you can go to the pictures again you’ll feel better, though why you don’t go now is beyond me. You keeping away isn’t going to bring your mother back. Who decided three months would be a respectful time to keep away? Who made the rules? Six months for deep mourning, another six for wearing mauve or a decent navy-blue. On the day you wear a yellow jumper, will that free you from the obligation of ever thinking about your mother again? I went to my mother’s funeral in a bright red hat.’

  ‘And it didn’t suit you neither,’ Daisy said at once, sounding so much like Martha that Florence laughed out loud. ‘Let’s go to Blackpool on Sunday,’ Daisy said, leaning forward. ‘On a day excursion. We can pick the … the things up from the hospital and have a blow on the front, and still be back in plenty of time for the oven if I bank it down carefully enough. It won’t bother me,’ she said quickly, reading Florence’s doubtful expression. ‘In fact, I would like to go again. Because if I don’t go soon I may never want to go at all.’

  ‘On account of your mother, or on account of Sam?’

  Daisy was silent. If she saw the place, the very spot where he had tried so carefully to explain to her that he valued her friendship and nothing more, maybe the acceptance that it was all over would be easier. But friends wrote letters, didn’t they? She had answered his note, thanking him for the money, not mentioning that it hadn’t arrived on time. She had bought flowers the following Sunday at the shop across from the cemetery gates, filled a stone sarsaparilla jar from one of the stand taps and stood the jar on the newly-laid stone. ‘From Sam’, she had written on a card, that being as suitable a message as she could think of. ‘And Jimmy and Dorothy’ she had added, hoping the children had not dwelled on what had happened that day. Then she had written to Sam telling him what she had done, but although her heart skipped a beat whenever the postman called, he had not written back.

  ‘I never give Sam a thought,’ she lied. ‘That’s over and done with. So what about catching the early train on Sunday? We’ll give chapel a miss for once.’

  The train had just chugged its way beyond Wrea Green when Florence spotted a small dark finger rising up from the meadow flats.

  ‘The Tower!’ she announced, and everyone in the compartment smiled and craned their necks for a better look.

  ‘Aye, it’s still there,’ an elderly man in the corner seat said with satisfaction. ‘I were there at the stone-laying ceremony in 1891, and I were there in Whit week in 1894 when it opened. They reckon rain is worth a guinea a drop to the Tower Company. It fetches everybody in off the sands.’

  Just outside Central Station
the train stopped for almost five minutes. Florence jumped up from her seat and stuck her head out of the window to see, above the red signal lights, the marvels of the Tower in close-up, its ironwork impressive and detailed.

  ‘Three years to build; more than one poor bugger falling to his death and five hundred and eighteen feet up into t’sky.’ The man in the corner knew his facts and was determined to show off his knowledge. ‘It has yon Eiffel Tower in Paris beaten to a frazzle.’

  ‘I reckon he’s a shareholder,’ Florence said as they walked out of the station. ‘Oh no! It’s starting to rain. I knew we should have brought umbrellas.’

  ‘We’ll take a taxi.’ Daisy wanted to get it over with. ‘Hang the expense; there are no pockets in shrouds.’

  She gave the name of the hospital to the driver and as they were driven through the closed shopping centre, past shuttered theatres and vast forecourts of newly-built garages, she saw how the Virginia creeper cloaking the red Accrington brick of the houses was already turning a dull coppery shade.

  ‘It’s very quiet today.’ Florence always chatted to taxi drivers and bus conductors. It enriched the mind, she had often told Daisy, finding out about other people’s lives.

  ‘Aye, it’s always quiet of a Sunday.’ The driver had an angry boil on the back of his neck. ‘But wait till the Illuminations come on. You won’t be able to put a pin between the crowds then. Lodging houses are booked solid already.’

  ‘Marshmallow ointment,’ Florence told him, as Daisy paid the fare outside the hospital. ‘Cut a hole in a piece of lint, then get your wife to put it on your neck and press, then apply the ointment. It won’t even leave a scar.’

  ‘You a nurse?’ The man jerked his head towards the hospital main doors. ‘Going on duty then?’