A Better World than This

by Marie Joseph

  ‘And … and the woman?’

  ‘Discharged herself and gone back to her husband, can you believe it? The poor mutt has taken her in. With thousands of spinsters at loose in the country looking out for a man, and only half of them qualifying for a pension at the end of their long working lives. Frustrated neurotics like thee and me.’

  ‘And a merry Christmas, to you, too,’ Daisy said. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’ve decided to do about the house? Though I think I’ll see what Uncle Arnold says before I make up my mind properly. I trust his judgement. I always have.’

  ‘I’d get him on his own,’ Florence advised. ‘You don’t want your Auntie Edna putting her spoke in. She’d put the kybosh on things right away if she knew you were consulting him. She could emasculate Tarzan, that woman.’

  Florence walked hunch-shouldered from the room, a Kirby grip loosening itself from the French pleat to drop with a tinkle on the oilcloth surround by the door. ‘But you’ll take the house. Some things are written in the stars. With me or without me, whatever your uncle says, you’ll take it. An’ you know you will.’

  Arnold spent many happy hours with Daisy during the next few weeks.

  ‘All things being equal I would have liked nothing better than an office job,’ he told her when she remarked on the neatness of his writing and his quickness at working out columns of figures. ‘But things weren’t equal, were they, chuck? The war saw to that. Aye, there were more than bodies buried in Flanders mud. Ambitions as well. Chances lost, opportunities never taken up. Nay, a white-collar job was out for me by the time all that lot was over.’

  ‘But don’t you feel resentful? Bitter?’

  ‘An’ where would that get me, lass?’ He opened the flap of Mr Harmer’s manilla envelope, spilling its contents over the table. ‘Right, now. Where was we last time?’ He showed Daisy a closely written page of figures. ‘This is the way I see it, lass. If you can up the Cronshawes a hundred pounds or so for the business, it will give you a bit to play with for solicitor’s fees and the like.’ He tapped the paper with a soil-ingrained finger. ‘They can afford it. Their chip-shop’s a little gold mine. They wouldn’t be setting their daughter up in the confectionery business if they didn’t know when they were on to a good thing.’

  ‘I don’t want to fleece them.’

  ‘Fleece them?’ Arnold clamped his lips together and moved his head from side to side. Tough on the outside this beloved niece of his, but with a heart as soft as marshmallow. ‘Why do you think they asked for first refusal even before they knew you’d decided to sell? There might be a slump, but one thing always does well if you give value for money, and that’s food. Folks can do without clothes and furniture, but food’s a necessity. Go ’bout shoes and you get segs on your feet; go ’bout food and you die.’

  He could feel the warmth spreading through his chest as Daisy listened to him, her bright eyes on his face, drinking in every word he said. It made him feel like a man again, to be taken for his proper worth. Not sneered at by his wife, a sneer often mirrored on his daughter’s face. There were days when he felt like shouting his head off at both of them, asserting his authority, but what authority was left to a man out of a job for over two years, a man who still had an instinct to throw himself flat on the ground, or run for the nearest bolt-hole when a rocket whooshed into the sky on Bonfire Night? Nay, best let them get on with it, the pair of them, and leave him to his allotment and his dominoes down at the pub on a Friday.

  ‘You’ll be having it properly surveyed and valued, lass?’

  ‘Mr Harmer is seeing to that, but they’re good solid houses, Uncle Arnold. Not jerry-built like some they’re throwing up further back from the promenade. I wish you could go with me one Sunday and give me your honest opinion.’

  He had to pretend to have a coughing fit to hide his pleasure, but Daisy recognized it for what it was. ‘It won’t cost you anything,’ she said carefully. ‘We’ll put it down to business expenses.’

  ‘I’ll come, and I’ll pay my own way.’ Arnold stood up to go. ‘If I can’t scrape up the train fare to Blackpool then it’s time I threw the flippin’ sponge in. Would next Sunday suit you, lass?’

  ‘You’re sure Auntie Edna won’t mind?’ Daisy followed him to the door. ‘She won’t feel left out or anything? I’d ask her to come as well, but she’s not on my side about all this.’

  Arnold unlatched the back door. ‘Leave it to me, chuck. You might not believe it, but I know how to handle your Auntie Edna.’

  ‘Well, what did you think of it?’ Edna was feeding the baby from a bottle when Arnold got back from Blackpool, his cheek-bones flushed where the sun and wind had caught them. ‘I hope you didn’t encourage that young madam to do something she’ll be sorry for. How she can even think of selling the shop our Martha worked her fingers to the bone for, I don’t know.’ The baby gulped the milk too quickly so Edna up-ended him and gave him a good thump. ‘It’s obvious the Cronshawes recognize they’re quids in buying the shop for their daughter. Fat chance of you ever doing anything like that for our Betty, bless her.’ She glared at him. ‘An’ before I forget. I found another lot of flamin’ green tomatoes at the back of the sideboard drawer where you’d hidden them to ripen off. If you fetch any more down from that allotment I’ll chuck them to the back of the fire.’

  ‘You could always make them into chutney.’ Arnold sat down and unlaced his boots. ‘It’s a good house, but it wants a lot doing to it. Daisy is going to have to offer special rates for Christmas and Easter to attract the custom she’s going to need.’ He eased his feet into a pair of shabby carpet slippers. ‘We found out today that the winter weekend trade is catching on fast. So there’s money about in spite of the slump. And in the winter Daisy can take in regulars at reduced rates. There’s two living in already.’

  Edna had lost the thread of what he was saying, but she wasn’t going to let on. She got up to put the baby in his pram, parked like a nuisance between the settee and the sideboard. ‘Is it true that Florrie Livesey’s going in with Daisy? Her father’s living with that common woman again. She went back to her husband for a while, but he soon threw her out.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to think Daisy was going in for all this on her own, would you?’ Arnold reached up to the mantelpiece for his tobacco pouch, then realized his baccy money had gone towards his day out. ‘She’s only a girl in spite of everything.’

  Edna’s better nature struggled with itself and for once won. ‘No, I wouldn’t like to think of her going away on her own. For our Martha’s sake I’d like her to be happy. God knows that was all Martha ever wanted for her. And if you’re pining for a smoke there’s an ounce of Tam-O-Shanter in the drawer behind those flamin’ green tomatoes. I managed it with cutting down on the Co-op order, so if food’s a bit short you’ll know why.’

  Arnold gave the pram handle a little jig as he took the tobacco out of the drawer. ‘He’s going off, love,’ he said, remembering to keep his voice low.

  PART TWO

  Chapter One

  ALMOST THE LAST thing Daisy did before she left the shop and the bakehouse to begin her new life was to send a printed card to Sam. She wrote a gay little note on the back:

  ‘Guess what? Can you see me as a Blackpool landlady?’

  On the front the card bore the letters ‘Shangri-La’, a name dreamed up by Daisy who had resumed her picture-going by a visit to Lost Horizon with the gentlemanly Ronald Colman as the hero of a Tibetan Utopia. The address, with ‘Proprietress Miss Daisy Bell’ in the bottom right-hand corner, was flanked on the left by ‘Breakfast and Evening Meal. Wash basins in all Bedrooms.’

  It wasn’t the same as a letter, she told herself. Not like running after him, as Martha would have said. Just a courtesy gesture to an old friend, in fact.

  She gave him time to reply. She fantasized about him sending her a telegram wishing her well, or a Good Luck card, or better still giving her the best thrill of all by writing to book a nice holiday break
for himself and the children.

  But nothing came, and at the end of a traumatic fortnight spent training Ada Cronshawe, now a triumphant Ada Davison, and her new husband into the ways of counter selling, wholesale buying of flour, currants and fresh supplies of pork-meat and daily deliveries of cream for the famous fancies, Daisy was forced to accept that Sam had crossed her from his memory. So why then couldn’t she be sensible and do the same? Why was he still there in the forefront of her thoughts before she slept at night, and there again when she opened her eyes each morning at the insistent ringing of her alarm clock? Why wouldn’t he just go away and leave her in peace?

  Florence went to say goodbye to her father, who was still in a state of holiness, and his equally sanctimonious lady friend, but when Matthew suggested they went down on their knees on the very spot where the broken gin bottle had lain to ask the Lord to shower His blessings on her new venture, she flatly refused.

  ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves,’ she said, leaving the pair of them to their devotions, hardly raising an eyebrow when Matthew swore the only drop he was ever going to touch again was Communion wine.

  Edna was being decent about it all now that Daisy had given her and Arnold a firm invitation to spend Easter at Shangri-La. ‘On the house, of course,’ Daisy had promised, and Betty, bless her, whispered a heartfelt thank you to her cousin for giving her the chance of a few days alone with Cyril and the baby. Not that she meant it nasty, not after what her mother did for them, but it would be nice all the same.

  At least twenty of the shop’s regular customers had promised to come for their holidays, making firm bookings, and the good Doctor Marsden and his wife had sent a set of ecru antimacassars in drawn-threadwork which Daisy had already allocated in her mind for the backs of the new chairs she was determined to buy for the brown lounge of Shangri-La.

  When the day came she went into the bakehouse for the last time. The new baker, with flour in his eyebrows, gave her a powdery handshake and one of the apprentices turned round from sliding a tray of loaves into the proving oven and grinned. Daisy patted the shiny black door of the fire-oven, stopped herself just in time from reaching up to adjust the damper, stepped out into the yard and walked through the door where Sam had once cupped her face in his hands and told her she was lovely. She was going now to a house where he had never been; where no memories lingered. She was free of him at last.

  They were travelling in the furniture van, parked in the exact spot where, on a brilliant summer’s day, the Rolls-Royce had stood at the kerb, gleaming with polish, with the Spirit of Ecstasy poised spread-winged on the bonnet.

  ‘All set, love?’ The driver, a scrawny little man, told Florence to hutch up. Daisy climbed in and they were off.

  The driver’s mate had helped to load the van with the few pieces of furniture Daisy had decided to take with her, had clutched his back, sworn he’d done it in and walking like a bent paper-clip, had gone off home to lie on a board.

  ‘I’ll manage, never fear.’ The driver coughed and wheezed, thumping his chest with a closed fist. ‘Breaks up the phlegm,’ he explained.

  After a few miles of listening to him hawking and rasping in his throat, Daisy uttered to Florence in a whisper she knew would be drowned by the noisy engine of the shabby little van: ‘If he doesn’t spit it out I’ll go crazy!’

  ‘If he does, I certainly will,’ Florence said, speaking equally softly and smiling at him, as he clenched his fist to begin the thumping and hawking process again.

  By a fluke of nature the day was more like spring; the Blackpool sky so wide and blue it reminded Daisy of a drawing in a child’s reading book, the clouds as white and stuffed as fat feather pillows. Climbing down from the van she lifted her head to sniff the salt and shrimps smell she had associated with Blackpool since her childhood. It was a day for walking on the promenade with a headscarf tied under her chin, not for watching helplessly as the puny driver struggled to unload a single mattress from the van.

  ‘He’s got a terrible chesty cold,’ she told Mrs Mac, who had appeared on the pavement the minute the van drew up at the kerb.

  ‘And TB,’ Mrs Mac said at once. ‘His lungs are shot, that’s obvious. I hope he didn’t breathe on you on the way.’

  ‘Coughed in my face the whole time,’ Florence said cheerfully. ‘Where is the nearest sanatorium I can book into when I start spitting blood?’

  Mrs Mac ignored her. ‘No good asking my husband, not with his hernia. He can’t move an inch without his truss, and Mr Penny’s at work, of course. Ee, my goodness, that mattress’ll flatten him if he doesn’t watch out.’

  With a swift exchange of glances, Daisy and Florence moved into action, spreading arms that didn’t seem long enough round one end of the unwieldy mattress and tottering backwards across the pavement. Daisy’s hat was knocked off, and Florence felt her hair coming down, but they managed to negotiate the front steps before setting their end down with a thud.

  ‘What on earth?’

  Two red faces turned as one in the direction of the voice. A man of slightly more than average height, his straight black hair plastered to his head with brilliantine, was coming out of Shangri-La wearing a camel-hair coat and a disbelieving expression on his neatly sculptured features.

  Cary Grant, Daisy’s mind registered at once, even to the cigarette held loosely in his left hand. She put a hand up to her unruly hair and bent down to retrieve her hat, thinking that if the vision stood still in a shop window as a dummy nobody would know the difference, so perfect was he in every detail from his polished shoes to his patent-leather hair.

  ‘Miss Bell, I take it?’ The vision held out a hand to Florence.

  ‘I’m Miss Bell.’ Daisy put out the hand holding the hat and blushed.

  ‘Looks like you’re having a spot of trouble.’ Taking off the splendid coat, he handed it to Mrs Mac and tossed the cigarette away. ‘Bobbie Schofield at your service,’ he said, taking one end of the mattress and negotiating the steps as nimbly as a mountain goat. ‘Up a bit with your end, old fruit. That’s the ticket!’

  *

  ‘No, we’re not going out for fish and chips.’ Daisy stood in the middle of the kitchen late that afternoon, surrounded by cartons and boxes and things with nowhere to go. ‘This is the first meal in this establishment and I won’t sink so low!’ She looked round wildly, trying to remember where she had packed the perishable food. ‘Mr Penny will be back from work soon and he’s going to sit down in the dining-room with Mr Schofield in a civilized manner and eat a decently-cooked tea. Ah, here it is!’ She pounced on a carton of greengrocery. ‘I knew there wouldn’t be time to do any food shopping today, so I brought a few things with me. I’ll make potato pancakes, with boiled beetroot and a nice slice of ham. And somewhere … somewhere there’s a box of Eccles cakes. They’ll have to do for pudding just for today.’

  There was a gleam in her eye that wouldn’t be denied. Florence could see already that Daisy was going to be in her element. The house might be in a turmoil of unpacked cases, books spilling everywhere, even down the stairs, no beds made up for them to sleep in tonight, and God knew where the knives and forks were kept underneath all this. But there were two hungry men to feed and come hell or high water Daisy would cook them a meal.

  ‘They’ve been fending for themselves for several months now, for heaven’s sake! One more day isn’t going to make any difference!’ Florence was really put out. The sight of Daisy wearing a blue scarf tied like a turban calmly gathering her ingredients together sent a prickle of irritation up her spine.

  ‘All the more reason they should know what properly cooked food can taste like.’ Daisy pounced with joy on a bag of plain flour. ‘Now, if I can find the onions. …’

  ‘Food!’ Florence clenched her fists. ‘You’re obsessed with food!’

  ‘Well, of course I am. It’s my job, and always has been.’ Daisy turned round in surprise. ‘There’s no need to be shirty about it.’

  ‘I am
not being shirty!’ Florence made a last attempt to latch on to her slipping control, and failed. ‘I just don’t think now is the time to do your Mrs Beeton act, that’s all.’

  Her legs ached, and there was a low grinding pain in the pit of her stomach. She could feel her poorly time coming on and knew it was going to be bad this month. If they had remembered to bring the Indian brandy she had no idea where it was. She had no idea where anything was, and if Daisy didn’t stop being so sweetly reasonable she might just clock her one. The force of Florence’s rage took her by surprise.

  ‘You were just the same at Guide camp,’ she said coldly and clearly. ‘Insisting on cooking flamin’ rabbit pie when sausages and bacon would have done just as well. Standing there under a tarpaulin in a wet field rolling pastry to show off. Everybody was laughing at you, if you must know.’

  ‘How many years ago was that?’ Daisy was genuinely astonished. ‘They ate the pie, anyroad. And enjoyed it, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Making you the heroine of the hour once again.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The flamin’ heroine. Like one of your flamin’ film stars. Who are you being now? Janet Gaynor?’ With that she turned on her heel and lurched from the kitchen, holding a hand to her head.

  Daisy heard her feet pounding on the stairs, then the slam of a door. It was a good job they were alone in the house, she muttered, following on with the potato-peeler still clutched in a hand. Imagine the visitors come for a nice holiday, sitting in the lounge or the dining-room, and hearing the staff quarrelling at the tops of their voices in the kitchen! She hurried along the landing to find that Florence had locked herself in a bedroom, turning a key that Daisy had thought was rusted into its lock.