A Better World than This

by Marie Joseph

  But he wasn’t, because he didn’t. Daisy held him close and watched him sleeping, her mind in a turmoil of indecision and apprehension, until at long last she fell asleep herself just as a hazy dawn filtered through the brown curtains, and her body clock, conditioned to early rising, jerked her awake at half-past four in time to stoke the fire-oven. Till she remembered where she was and how, in the past few hours, her life had taken a turn she could never have envisaged, not in the wildest of her fantasies.

  *

  Florence came down before six, fully dressed and with her hair pinned up in its pleat, pale and composed and prepared to be servile and to keep her thoughts to herself.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me what it’s all about? Where is he?’

  Daisy closed the kitchen door. ‘Asleep. In the lounge.’ She swallowed hard, hoping the hated blush wouldn’t materialize, but she felt it warming her cheeks like a scald. ‘He’s going back to London this morning, but he’s leaving … he’s leaving his son with me.’

  ‘He’s what?’ Florence forgot to be circumspect. ‘For how long, am I allowed to ask?’

  ‘Indefinitely.’ Daisy avoided Florence’s eyes. ‘His wife has left him and taken the little girl with her, but she doesn’t want Jimmy. So … I’ve said he can stay here.’

  Florence stared hard at Daisy. At her crumpled skirt and tired puffed face. ‘You’ve not been to bed, have you?’ Realization dawned. ‘You’ve been with him. All night! Haven’t you?’ She sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘You really have done it, haven’t you? And I always thought you, of all people, had your head screwed on right.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t, did you? You wouldn’t be that stupid. Would you?’

  ‘He has more respect for me.’ The colour in Daisy’s face deepened again. ‘When he gets his divorce we’ll be getting married. Oh yes we will,’ she emphasized. ‘So don’t look at me like that.’

  Florence flung out an arm in a dramatic gesture. ‘And what about all this? The house? The lodgers? The money you’ve sunk into it? Everything? What is he going to do? Pass his flamin’ exams, then come up here and sit in the corner peeling potatoes like Mr Mac next door, or stand at that sink washing up, with a towel tied round his middle? Or are you going to give all this up? Even before you’ve got started?’

  And what about me, a voice inside her head was saying. Where do I come in all this? She pushed the ignoble thought aside. Daisy looked so crushed, so vulnerable, so awful with her hair as straight as a yard of pump-water; so much like an early Christian martyr resigned to being a lion’s breakfast, Florence felt a sudden upsurge of exasperated affection.

  ‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll set the tables. You’ll be cooking breakfast, that goes without saying.’

  ‘Don’t hate me, Florence.’ Daisy’s voice was very small. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you turned against me now.’

  ‘Whither thou goest,’ Florence said at once, about to qualify this when Sam opened the door. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, managing to pass him without touching him.

  ‘I’m going now, love.’

  Sam rubbed a stubbly chin with a thumb. ‘I’ve got to get back to take the boss into town this afternoon. I can shave when I get there.’

  The kettle came to a noisy boil, and Daisy turned off the gas jet. He had done this once before. On the day her mother had died. Explained that he must leave and gone quickly, leaving her muddle-headed and bereft.

  ‘I’ve been up and said goodbye to Jimmy. He knows what’s going on. He’s okay.’ Sam reached into an inside pocket and took out his wallet. ‘We agreed ten shillings a week, didn’t we?’ He put two pounds down on the table. ‘I think you’ll find all his things in the case. Aileen’s pretty methodical.’

  As if someone had nudged him, he came and put his arms round Daisy. ‘I’m not going to say thank you, because there isn’t a word adequate enough to express how I feel.’ He traced her mouth with a finger. ‘You’ve saved my life, Daisysbell. You’re the best in the world. Do you know that?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Florence said, coming into the kitchen for the knives and forks, then going out again, her back as rigid as an exclamation mark. From upstairs came the sound of a door banging closed and a man whistling.

  ‘Mr Schofield,’ Daisy said faintly. ‘He works as a postman so he can go dancing in the afternoons.’

  ‘Then I’ll let you get on.’ Sam nodded at the frying pan. ‘Before I’m tempted to linger. I’ll stop half-way down if I’m making good time.’

  In the hall he kissed Daisy again, shrugged himself into the black leather coat, took the leather helmet down from its antler peg, hesitated, then pulled Daisy to him again.

  ‘There’s a lot more to say,’ he whispered, ‘and there hasn’t been time, but I’ll write. I’ll write tonight. See you soon,’ he added, opening the door to a tiny round man with a bald head ringed by a Friar Tuck fringe, and a boy with the aged crumpled features of a garden gnome.

  ‘Mr Leadbetter.’ The man’s face widened into a smile. ‘Your builder. Nowt like an early start, missus.’ He stepped round Sam, followed by the boy carrying a bag of tools so obviously heavy it stooped his thin shoulders almost level with his prominent ears. ‘Now, if you’ll give me some idea, missus. …’

  ‘I won’t be a minute.’ Flustered and unhappy, Daisy went out to the kerb and stood watching Sam straddle the motorbike, fasten the flying helmet beneath his chin and pull on the black leather gauntlet gloves. Her ‘Goodbye, Sam’ was lost in the sudden roar of the engine, but his eyes, behind the leather goggles, seemed to be signalling a message she failed to catch. With a roar that reverberated in her eardrums he was gone, bending over the handlebars of the hideous and noisy machine like a contender in the TT races on the Isle of Man.

  Leaving Mr Leadbetter tut-tutting over the impossibility of turning the space under the stairs into a downstairs toilet and Florence scraping the burned bits off a slice of overdone toast in the kitchen, Daisy went upstairs to Jimmy.

  ‘Well then,’ she said, with a heartiness she was far from feeling. ‘How about getting out of that bed and coming down to breakfast? A boiled egg,’ she suggested, ‘with toast soldiers. I expect you have toast soldiers down in London, don’t you?’

  ‘I hate eggs,’ Jimmy said promptly, his eyes wide and wary above the blanket pulled up to his ears. ‘Eggs come out of hens’ bottoms. Yuk.’ He made a vomiting sound, his eyes never leaving her face as he gauged her reaction.

  ‘Well, toast and honey then.’ Daisy remembered unpacking a jar, so that was all right.

  ‘Yuk!’ Again the graphically expressed disgust. ‘Honey comes out of bees’. …’

  Daisy interrupted quickly. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll find something.’ She ruffled the dark tuft of hair which was all she could see now of Jimmy. ‘Mr Penny’s in the bathroom so you can wash your hands in the kitchen just for once.’ She bent down to the case lying open on the floor. ‘My goodness, this is a nice jersey. How about putting this on today?’

  ‘Yuk. …’

  Daisy struggled to keep her voice even. What had she expected, for heaven’s sake? That the little boy would throw his arms round her neck and tell her how happy he was to be dumped on her in the middle of the night, a strange woman he’d met once, almost a year ago? That he would trip merrily into the bathroom and wash and clean his teeth before coming down to eat his breakfast looking like Freddie Bartholomew in Little Lord Fauntleroy?

  ‘I smoke,’ came the announcement from the bed. ‘Cigarettes.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Florence said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. ‘That’s interesting. What brand?’ She spoke quickly to Daisy. ‘You’d better go downstairs. That builder says this house is falling to bits, and he seems to think that’s so funny he’s down there laughing his socks off. I don’t know whether he’s joking or not, but we can only hope he is.’

  ‘Now then, young man,’ Daisy heard her saying, as she flew downstairs to stem the builde
r’s hilarity. ‘Out of that bed!’

  Mr Leadbetter thought that his every utterance was a scream and had the laugh to prove it. ‘Haha, haw haw, haha.’ Each burst of mirth only lasted for a second, but his obvious enjoyment had a profoundly depressing effect on Daisy.

  ‘Jerry-built,’ he announced, tapping a wall with a hammer. ‘Haha, haw haw. See that crack in the ceiling, missus? Subsidence, missus. Haha, haw haw. And that discoloration by the skirting board? Damp course faulty, if you want my opinion.’ This last statement almost convulsed him so much that the ensuing laugh turned into a spluttering cough.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Florence pushed past them, giving Daisy the thumbs-up sign. ‘Getting dressed,’ she whispered to Daisy. ‘And Mr Penny will be down any minute. He’s in a hurry to catch his train.’

  ‘Mr Leadbetter.’ Daisy spoke firmly. ‘While you’re counting my blessings, could you go upstairs and look at the bathroom. And watch out for mildew. I’ve had four towels rotted since yesterday.’

  ‘A joker, eh?’ Mr Leadbetter winked at his apprentice, standing putty-coloured and shy behind him. ‘Well, you’re going to need a sense of humour before this lot’s set to rights. Haha, haw, haw! Leave them tools down here, lad. And watch out you don’t fall through the stairs, missus.’

  ‘Dry rot?’ Daisy suggested sweetly.

  ‘All I will say, missus,’ Mr Leadbetter replied dead-pan, ‘is that if you’ve left owt on the landing it might be safer to go out and buy a new one than run up to fetch it. That’s all I’m prepared to say.’

  ‘Things will soon be running smoothly, Mr Penny.’

  Daisy placed two perfectly poached eggs in front of her lodger, unaware that she was speaking on a note of rising hysteria. ‘You must be thinking you’ve got a madhouse going on all around you.’ She hesitated, feeling the hated blush warming her cheeks. ‘It was just that my … my fiancé turned up unexpectedly. From down south. I’m going to look after his son for a while.’

  ‘Nice little lad.’ Mr Penny busied himself with his breakfast. ‘I caught him hanging out of the landing window just before I came down. Not too far out,’ he soothed. ‘So your fiancé is a widower, like me?’

  ‘No. Sam isn’t a widower.’ Daisy remembered the uninhibited curiosity of this man, and how she had recognized it as a trait she possessed herself. ‘He’s getting a divorce. It’s just that it isn’t convenient for Jimmy to be with his mother.’

  ‘I see,’ Mr Penny said, seeing nothing at all. ‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of Mr Leadbetter, Miss Bell. He used to do quite a lot of work for Mrs Entwistle, and he always makes it sound like it can’t be done, and if it can, will take some considerable time.’

  ‘Like four or five years, that’s if the roof doesn’t fall in first?’

  Mr Penny laughed, dabbed his mouth with his napkin and stood up, draining his cup of tea. ‘A nice breakfast, Miss Bell. Beats a banana and a cup of water any old day.’

  Daisy followed him to the door. ‘Is that all you’ve been having?’

  ‘I survived. As you see.’ He shrugged himself into a tweed overcoat, picked up a leather case and placed a brown trilby on his head. Opening the front door, he raised the hat an inch from his head and stepped out into the street. ‘Till this evening, Miss Bell. There’s a teachers’ meeting, so I may be an hour or so late.’

  ‘The meal will be ready when you are, Mr Penny,’ Daisy said, going in, closing the door, then leaning against it for a minute.

  What a funny man he was? Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. She felt as if she had known him all her life. Talking to him was like talking to an older brother. No need to be on the defensive, either. A pal, in spite of her mother always maintaining that there was no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman. She wondered if he taught boys or girls, and decided that either way he would be tolerant and wise.

  ‘I’m not stopping here.’ Jimmy was staring at a slice of toast when she went into the kitchen. ‘I am going to run away.’

  As Florence and Daisy exchanged a glance of dismay, he scraped his chair back and ran out into the hall, climbing the stairs two at a time, pushing past a chortling Mr Leadbetter gaily poking a floorboard with a giant-sized screwdriver.

  ‘Jimmy?’ Daisy followed the sobbing boy into the bedroom. She closed the door. ‘That’s right. Have a good cry. Here, have my handkerchief, it’s not as hairy to the nose as that blanket.’

  ‘I don’t like you!’ Jimmy wailed, snatching the handkerchief from her and scrubbing at his eyes. ‘And I don’t like it here, neither.’

  Daisy carefully kept her distance. ‘I agree with you, love. I don’t much like me either. And I don’t like it here one little bit. Not with everything cold and messy.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘You saw that man on the landing? He’s just told me this house is dropping to bits before his very eyes.’

  A gleam appeared between the swollen slits of Jimmy’s eyelids. ‘You mean really dropping to bits? Big holes in the floors and everything?’

  ‘He says so.’ Daisy sat down on the bed, still well away from him. ‘So I might just have a good cry too. Have you finished with that handkerchief?’ She accepted the sodden ball. ‘So what I thought I’d do. … Yes, what I decided to do was to go out to the shops, and on the way back call in at the pet shop on the corner and buy myself a kitten. To cheer myself up. You know?’

  ‘Or a puppy?’

  ‘No, a kitten.’ Daisy restrained herself from putting out a hand to touch the drooping bullet-shaped head. ‘Do you remember coming to see me once when I lived in the pie shop?’

  ‘No,’ lied Jimmy.

  ‘Oh, well, never mind. But we had a cat there. To catch the mice in the bakehouse. A ginger cat, striped like a tiger. When I came to live here we had to leave the cat behind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because cats get used to places, rather than people. And you know, that old cat didn’t love anybody! He was so mean he used to slink about just hating everybody. His eyes met in the middle. Like this.’ As Jimmy forgot himself enough to steal a glance, Daisy crossed her eyes and bared her teeth, holding her breath when the corners of the small set mouth quivered briefly into the semblance of a reluctant smile. ‘So I think I’ll choose a kitten that is all furry and snuggly. One I can call something like Ethel.’

  ‘That’s not a right name for a kitten.’

  ‘Or Kevin, maybe.’

  ‘That’s a boy’s name. There’s a boy in my class called Kevin. I hate him.’

  Daisy got up and walked to the door. ‘Of course, if you came with me to help me choose it, you could choose the name.’ She hesitated, one hand on the door knob. ‘But then if you’re going to run away you’ll have your packing to do, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m not stopping here, though.’ Jimmy followed her on to the landing, tripping over what could only have been the faded pattern in the beef-tea-coloured oilcloth. ‘My dad’ll come and fetch me if I ask him. I can write letters you know.’

  ‘I’ll give you a stamp,’ Daisy said. ‘Now go down and talk to Florence for a minute. I’ve got to have a word with Mr Leadbetter.’

  ‘I don’t like Florence. …’ Jimmy’s hoarse voice spiralled over his shoulder like a trail of grey smoke. ‘I bet she’s a witch. She looks like a witch. There are lots of witches about, you know.’

  ‘Mr Leadbetter?’ Daisy addressed the builder’s right ear, the other one being pressed to the floorboards listening hopefully, she guessed, for the scurrying of the death-watch beetle. ‘Could I have a word with you, please?’

  With the ease of a man half his age, Mr Leadbetter peeled himself from the floor and stood up. ‘I have to tell you, Miss Bell …’ he began cheerfully, but Daisy held up her hand.

  ‘I’m going to be straight with you, Mr Leadbetter, because that’s the only way I know how to be.’ She smiled, causing the builder to widen his eyes in surprise.

  This lass was a proper bonny woman! Now why hadn’t he seen that before? She was dressed
like a rag-bag and her hair was crying out for a perm, but when her face lit up like that what a difference it made. Younger, too, than he’d thought. Nobbut a lass, really. He waited.

  ‘I have only so much money to spend on the structural work in this house.’ Daisy mentioned a figure. ‘That much and no more, so we have to stick to priorities. Those are wash basins in all the bedrooms, a new bath, a new toilet, more working space beneath the cupboards in the kitchen, the whole house repapering and that ugly brown paint stripped from all the doors and repainted cream. A downstairs toilet built in, and the dining-room fireplace opened up so that a gas fire can be fitted. I believe you rewired the house for electricity not all that long ago, so I’m sure that’s all right.’ She paused to take a breath. ‘I want it done as quickly as possible in order to have the hall and the lounge recarpeted in time for Easter visitors.’ She smiled again, looking straight into his eyes exactly on a level with her own. ‘So if you can give me your estimate, taking all that into consideration, maybe we can do business.’

  She started for the stairs. ‘I realize you’ll have a lot of working out to do before you can give me a detailed estimate, and I appreciate your concern for the dry rot and the termites breeding merrily beneath the floorboards, but for the time being they’ll just have to get on with their lives and let me get on with mine. Remember, I’m not going to try to cater for folks who can afford to go on a continental holiday or on a cruise; just for folks who work hard and need a week or a fortnight away from it all. To enjoy themselves in comfort, Mr Leadbetter, because that’s what I’m determined to do for them. Feed them well and make them feel at home. An’ I’m no novice at that either. I’ve been in the catering trade since I left school, so I know what I’m aiming for.’ She put out a hand and let it rest lightly for a brief moment on the builder’s jacket sleeve. ‘Now! Do we understand each other, Mr Leadbetter? I’d like to think we do.’