A Better World than This

by Marie Joseph

  One half of the Accrington couple wanted bacon crisp, the other half told Daisy just to show it the frying pan, the way you did with liver. Joshua came down, asked for tea and nothing else and went straight out. Daisy wondered if he remembered kissing her and thought how awful he looked with his eyes all bloodshot and his face a nasty putty colour. Edna offered to stay in the house that afternoon to welcome the visitors when they arrived, leaving Daisy free for a snatched hour in which she could make a quick dash to the hospital and back.

  ‘I want very much to go and see Florence.’ Daisy looked worried. ‘But it’s my job to be here. One family is coming from as far away as Kilmarnock. They’re Mrs Mac’s overflow. They’ll expect me to be here to show them to their room.’

  ‘The graveyards,’ said Edna with a sniff, ‘are full of indispensable people. Six feet under. But suit yourself. One of these days you might be glad of me.’

  ‘I’m glad of you now, Auntie.’ Realizing that she was, Daisy leaned forward and kissed Edna’s cheek. ‘Okay, I’ll go. I’ll show you what there is to do first.’

  ‘No need for that, chuck.’ Chuffed to bits by the unexpected caress, Edna actually smiled. ‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’

  By two o’clock that afternoon Daisy had rushed around so much her hands shook as she combed her hair and caught it back at one side with a tortoiseshell slide. Twelve people had booked in, with another four to arrive. She had staggered up the stairs with cases, thrown open bedroom doors, pointed out the bathroom and the two toilets, and served tea and biscuits in the lounge to the new arrivals.

  The fish for the evening meal, fresh hake, so fresh the fins were still flapping according to the fishmonger, was in the wire-netted safe out at the back, and the batter was settling in the big earthernware dish, just waiting for that important last-minute stir to give it the all-important air bubbles. She was making a coconut pudding with milk, breadcrumbs, sugar and eggs, and to go with the bedtime drinks a big batch of Easter biscuits, with plenty of chopped candied peel and just the right amount of cinnamon essence to give them a nice tang.

  The tall old house was full of people; they either went straight to their rooms to unpack, or dashed out for that first exciting walk along the promenade. Winnie had staved off one of her threatened fainting attacks by stuffing herself silly with anything going, including the uncooked scraps left over from the Easter biscuits and the scrapings of coconut mixing from the sides of the big earthenware bowl.

  ‘She’s a scream,’ Daisy told Florence, sitting by the side of the high white bed at the end of the long ward. ‘You have to laugh.’

  ‘Why?’

  Daisy looked flustered. ‘What do you mean, why?’

  ‘Why do you have to laugh?’

  Daisy sighed. So Florence was going to be in one of her moods, was she? Lying on her back, with her eyes closed, the lids rounded over her slightly bulging eyes, she had already told Daisy that the blisters on her feet were bigger than blown-up balloons; that a young doctor kept trying to force her to talk about her childhood. As if some memory from when she was no more than a baby had nudged her arm, causing her to spill the boiling water all over her feet.

  ‘He’s an amateur Freud,’ she said scathingly.

  ‘Sam’s gone back,’ Daisy said, thinking to cheer Florence up a bit.

  ‘The flarchy rotter,’ Florence said without opening her eyes.

  Daisy fidgeted on the little hard chair. This was to have been her big day. The day she had worked towards since first deciding to sell the pie shop and move to Blackpool. With her moving graciously into the hall to greet each new arrival, assuring them of her best attention at all times, inviting them to sign the visitors’ book and anticipating their cries of delight when they stepped inside the bedrooms with the gleaming new wash basins and bedspreads matching the curtains. She felt impatient with Florence, then immediately guilty.

  ‘Joshua got tiddly last night,’ she said, trying once again to make Florence smile. She had already decided not to tell about Bobbie being held in police custody. That would have been too upsetting. ‘Yes, Joshua was so much under the influence he lurched into the house, keeping his hat on, staggered into the kitchen, swept me into his arms and kissed me! Passionately!’

  ‘Then what?’ Florence spoke so softly Daisy only just caught what she said.

  ‘Then he raised his hat, bowed politely, apologized out of the side of his mouth like a gangster, and walked straight upstairs to bed.’

  ‘I’d like you to go now, please, Daisy.’

  Daisy looked swiftly round for a nurse. Florence had gone so white her face seemed to merge into the starched cotton of her pillow-slip. Could a person faint while lying flat in bed?

  ‘Would you like a drink of water?’ Daisy picked up the glass from Florence’s bedside locker. ‘Come on. Lift your head up and I’ll help you.’

  Snapping her eyes open Florence stared up into Daisy’s round rosy face, not a foot from her own. Look at her, a little voice inside her head screamed. Look at that face with its wide-apart dark eyes, the mouth curved and smiling. Oh, dear God, always smiling. The straight nose and the thick shiny hair falling forward to curve on to Daisy’s cheeks with their peach-blossom glow. Joshua kissed those lips, not because he was drunk, but because he wanted to. Drunk with longing, drunk with desire, drunk with the need of her. …

  ‘I’ll look after you,’ Daisy was saying in her low husky voice. ‘You won’t have to do a thing till you’re better. Young Winnie will soon get into the swing of things. I’ve got her measure already.’

  Deliberately Florence knocked Daisy’s hand away so that the water spilled over the top turned-down sheet. ‘You mean you have charmed her,’ she said in a cold distinct voice. ‘Just like you set yourself out to charm everyone you meet. You force people to like you. You use people. You get at them by mothering them, by making a fuss of them. But you’re not doing it to me. Because I don’t want to be looked after. I refuse to be patronized. I will accept your charity no longer!’

  ‘What on earth is all that about?’ Daisy snatched the towel from the rail behind Florence’s locker and began dabbing the sopping sheet with it. ‘I don’t patronize you, Florence, and I certainly don’t see you as an object of charity.’ She stepped back in astonishment as Florence jerked the towel from her and tossed it on to the floor at the other side of the bed. ‘I need you, love. I couldn’t do what I’ve set out to do without you. I would never have gone in for this business without you as a partner.’ She sat down again and tried to take Florence’s hand in her own. ‘You are my friend. My best friend. Remember?’

  ‘Joshua is your friend,’ Florence said in a high piercing voice. ‘Bobbie is your friend. Jimmy is your friend. “Daisy is my good friend,” he told me one day, and that was after you’d walloped him one for being cheeky.’ The large pale eyes glittered with a terrible rage. ‘I would say that Sam is your friend, but what you and he feel for each other is not friendship. Oh, no, what you and he feel for each other is lust. Purely and simply L-U-S-T! Lust!’

  ‘Florence!’ Daisy glanced round the ward, but perhaps Florence wasn’t speaking as loudly as she seemed to be doing. The afternoon visitors went on talking to the patients propped up for their benefit. A nurse at the far end of the ward trundled a tea trolley through the doors, the rubber wheels squeaking on the shiny floor. ‘I’ll go and get you a cup of tea,’ she said quickly. ‘You’ll feel better for a cup of tea.’

  ‘You do that,’ Florence said clearly, ‘and I will throw it at you.’

  ‘Stop behaving like Jimmy on one of his bad days.’ Daisy pulled the chair closer to the bed. ‘Let me tell you about the visitors. Do you remember that very fair girl from the mill who used to come in the shop and tell us tall stories about what went on in the weaving sheds? Finishing off every sentence with “God’s honour, kid”. Well, she’s just the same. Every time she opens her mouth. “God’s honour, kid, it’s lovely. I like you with your hair like that, Daisy. G
od’s honour, kid. God’s honour, kid, what a thing to happen to Florence! You remember Florence, don’t you?” This to her husband. “You know, Florence Livesey, Daisy’s friend.” Whispering to me: “God’s honour, kid, his memory’s shocking. I don’t think he’d recognize me if we didn’t live in the same house.”’

  ‘The thing is, I’m not cut out for anything.’ Florence’s long thin hands were scrabbling at the wet sheet, pulling it up into pleats. ‘I’m not trained for anything apart from flashing a torch along a row of cinema seats. I can’t sew a hem without tying the cotton in knots. The scones I make turn out like biscuits. I hate knitting, even if I was any good at it. I bet I could burn a cup of tea if I put my mind to it. I have no physical attributes to speak of, and I loathe being nice to people I dislike.’

  ‘Apart from all that you’re lovely,’ Daisy said. ‘Oh, come on, Florence. If I tried to list my talents, a twopenny stamp would be too big to write them down on. We’re in the same boat, you and me. Both of us could have gone on and furthered our education, but circumstances saw to it that we didn’t. You might have been a teacher, and I might have been the secretary to a top tycoon, going off to the office with a clean white collar stitched into my smart navy dress and a spare pair of white gloves in my handbag. You could have married the Prince of Wales if he hadn’t seen Mrs Simpson first.’

  ‘I am neither use nor ornament,’ Florence intoned.

  ‘And a happy Easter to you too,’ Daisy said, getting up to go. Bending over the bed she dropped a light kiss on Florence’s forehead. ‘Cheer up, love. It’ll all be the same a hundred years from now.’

  ‘Is that a cause for rejoicing?’ Florence raised a languid hand to push a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Give my love to Joshua.’

  ‘He’ll be coming to see you over the long weekend, I’m sure of it. He’s very fond of you, you know.’

  The look Florence gave her would have floored a lesser woman. Now what had she said? On the way out Daisy had a quick word with Sister, who told her that Miss Livesey wasn’t making the progress they had hoped for, that shock sometimes had that effect.

  ‘She’ll be all right when I get her home,’ Daisy told her, hurrying away down the long corridor, her mind already firmly fixed on the busy hours ahead. She had seen Florence in this mood before. In particular, on one July day when the streets shimmered in the heat and Daisy had left her little mother lying dead somewhere in this same hospital. Daisy would have a word with Joshua when he’d recovered from his embarrassment over his silly behaviour of the night before. Together they would coax Florence back into cheerfulness again. And Winnie would help. Winnie Whalley was a laugh a line if anyone was. And the extra money to pay her wages? Well, Daisy had a motto for that:

  ‘Spend and God’ll send.’

  She only hoped He would cooperate!

  Joshua wasn’t going to mention his lapse. Daisy was relieved about that. She was flip-flapping a fillet of hake in and out of the batter when he came into the kitchen.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, too busy to look at him. ‘It looks like an earthquake has just hit us, but it’s what you call organized chaos. We know what we’re doing, don’t we, Winnie?’

  ‘We’re a good team, Mr Penny,’ Winnie said, repeating what Daisy had kept telling her. ‘We have some good laughs too, don’t we, Miss Bell?’

  ‘We do an’ all.’ Daisy made the time to turn round and wink at Joshua. ‘Go through and make sure every table has a sauce bottle on it, Winnie, love, and put the high chair round the Birtwistles’ table. They’re letting the baby stop up for his meal.’

  ‘Winnie has five younger brothers and sisters,’ Daisy told Joshua. ‘And I suspect she’s half-starved. The mother has to do two jobs to keep them, would you believe it? Charring by day and working behind a bar at night. The next one down to Winnie, a fourteen-year-old girl, will be taking over from today. By the way, Florence sends you her love. I went to see her this afternoon and found her plumbing the depths. Poor Florence, she feels things keenly, always has.’

  Joshua couldn’t take his eyes off her. Daisy was the only person he had ever met who could do not two things at once but three, and keep up a running conversation at the same time. Not many yards away, gathered together in the lounge, what looked like enough people to fill a football stadium waited noisily to be called into the dining room. A man with a beer belly and a Friar Tuck fringe strummed on the piano, one small boy had his brother in an armlock on the rug, while sitting on the settee showing her blue directoire knickers, Daisy’s auntie passed photographs round of a large bandy-legged baby.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Joshua felt a sudden pang of tenderness choke him in the throat. It was impossible, surely, that one young woman, almost single-handed, could produce and serve a meal for the obviously ravenous horde whooping it up in the lounge. ‘Till Florence comes back,’ he went on. ‘Just for this school holiday?’ The noise outside rose to a crescendo. ‘Daisy! Make use of me. I’m panicking even if you aren’t.’

  ‘You can sound the gong,’ Daisy said. ‘For the very first time. I will give you that honour, Joshua. But don’t hit it too hard. There’s a four-month-old baby asleep in the double room at the front. I’d like its parents to enjoy their meal in peace.’

  How on earth had she managed it? How had she kept all this food piping hot till the very last minute? Had he ever tasted batter so crisp, feather-light and dry? Chips so evenly browned?

  ‘Nowt to beat home-cooked fish and chips,’ Joshua heard the man on the next table tell his wife. ‘Beats all this foreign muck they’ll be having in the posh hotels on the front. Rice – and I don’t mean rice pudding – served on the same plate as the meat, mushroom vollyvarnts and horses doovers. You know the kind of thing. I met this chap on the pier while you were round the shops and he told me about it. And they’re paying eight shillings a night, with meals charged on top of that! I reckon we’ve struck it lucky here. Eh up, lass, it looks like we’re getting a proper pudding as well.’ He licked his lips at the sight of the wedge of golden-tinged coconut sponge set in front of him by a gently perspiring Winnie, her red hair almost standing on end.

  Faced when it was all over by the mountain of washing-up, Winnie clapped a dramatic hand to her forehead. ‘We’ll be at it till midnight, Miss Bell.’ She reached for a towel. ‘Good job we made time for a bite before we began.’ She eyed the remains of the pudding with a gleam in her eye. ‘That going beggin’, Miss Bell? I’m that hungry I might faint.’

  ‘If you do I will cover you up with a tablecloth and carry on,’ Daisy told her. ‘Finish the custard up at the same time. It was worth making it properly with plenty of eggs and full-cream milk. I just hope they could tell the difference.’

  ‘Oh, I told one woman,’ Winnie said, scraping her spoon diligently round the large pie-dish. ‘None of your powdered muck for Miss Bell,’ I said. ‘Everything’s made from bloody scratch in yon kitchen. The eggs in that custard were still warm from the hens’ backsides.’

  ‘You never said that?’ Daisy’s uninhibited laugh rang out. ‘Oh, Winnie. I do love you!’

  It had been said lightly, a spontaneous remark from a full and thankful heart that the first meal had gone off so well. What Daisy wasn’t prepared for was Winnie’s reaction.

  Laying her head down on the table by the side of the scraped-clean pie-dish Winnie burst into noisy tears. ‘An’ I love you, too,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve never been so happy in my whole life as I’ve been today. You don’t know what it’s like at our house with the kids crying and the boys fighting, an’ no carpets down an’ me mam coming in from work in a flamin’ temper on account of being tired, then going out again in time for the pub to open, with too much rouge on her face so she won’t look so pale behind the bar. It’s like being in a palace in this house. Everybody happy and laughing with being on their holidays, and you and me such a good team.’ She raised a ravaged face. ‘An’ when your friend comes out of hospital you won’t need me no
more. You an’ her’ll be having all the good laughs we’ve had today an’ I’ll be back at home wiping noses and worse – oh, Miss Bell, three of me brothers are all under four ’an you’ve no idea how many bottoms they seem to have between them!’

  ‘Oh, Winnie. …’ Wiping her hands on her apron, Daisy came and knelt down on the oilcloth beside Winnie’s chair. ‘It has been grand today, hasn’t it? If I could afford to I’d keep you on like a flash.’ She was rapidly doing little sums in her mind. ‘As it is, Miss Livesey won’t be up to much for a long while yet. She’ll need looking after and feeding up – she looked awful when I saw her this afternoon – so there’s no question of you leaving here just yet.’

  ‘I hope they send her to a convalescent home.’ Winnie’s expression was fierce as she began on the drying-up. ‘Me dad went to one of those before he died and he was there for four weeks.’ She rubbed a plate round vigorously. ‘But it didn’t do him no good.’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ Daisy said. ‘All the nice things you remember, then we’ll soon get through this lot.’

  ‘He was … he had lovely manners. Like what I mean is, he never spit in the fire.’

  ‘I like the sound of him already,’ said Daisy, watching the colour slowly creeping back into Winnie’s pale face.

  ‘Winnie could have Bobbie’s room,’ Daisy told Joshua at a quarter to midnight on Easter Monday. ‘Do you really think he’ll be away for all that time?’ She rubbed her eyes in an attempt to stop her eyelids drooping. ‘I can’t thank you enough for going to see him again. I’ll go myself later on this week, though Mrs Mac says I could have a full house again with the weather turning so mild. You’re sure Florence will be all right to come back by taxi tomorrow? It was so good of you to go to see her twice this weekend.’ She smiled a tired smile. ‘You’re a very nice man, Joshua Penny.’

  ‘Somebody has to try to look after you.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Do you still want me to go to Preston to meet Jimmy on Sunday?’

  ‘If you’re sure, and if you don’t mind. …’