A Better World than This

by Marie Joseph

  ‘I don’t mind and I’m sure.’

  ‘Remember that time when we sat in here like this, that first time we met, and you made me an omelette that could have been used to replace a tile on the roof?’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘We coped, Bobbie and me.’

  Joshua knew that Daisy was only half listening to him, that her ears were straining to pick up the second the insensitive pair in the lounge stopped shaking the dice and ended what seemed to be a spirited game of Ludo. He wished he had the right to tell her to go on up to bed, that he would see to the lights and the fire. He knew that he ought to have told her of his decision to move out of his room and find another place to live. He worried about the look on Florence’s face when Daisy’s name came up. It was a look he recognized very well from his specialized training of years ago. A child in his school had it – a sly expression compounded of spite and envy, destructive wasteful emotions both of them.

  The scalding of Florence’s feet was, in his opinion, merely the culmination to months of mental deterioration. Her moods had swung from near hysterical gaiety to bleak depression. Florence was unstable, and if he tried to warn Daisy she would refuse to believe him. ‘Florence has a great burning anger inside her.’ He remembered Daisy saying something like that to the solicitor on that first day when he had lingered shamelessly outside the lounge door and eavesdropped.

  No, he must move on before he became too involved. After all, he had no claim on Daisy, and though the prospect of never seeing her again appalled him, he must remind himself what one of his favourite ancient Chinese philosophers had once said: ‘You can’t lose what you never had.’ True, matter-of-fact and sensible.

  ‘I think Sam is seeing his wife again.’ Daisy picked up a spoon from the table and began to run her finger along its length. She raised troubled eyes. ‘I have to talk to someone, Joshua. There isn’t anyone else as totally unbiased as you are. Florence is scared in case I marry Sam and cast her aside – as if I would. She’s very conscious of the fact that she’s forced by circumstances to rely on me for her livelihood and the roof over her head. At least that’s the way she sees it. She can never ever see that I need her as much as she needs me. For someone as independent as Florence it must be agony to be reliant on someone else. It’s enough to make her hate me.’

  She looked so distressed that Joshua had to clench his hands to prevent himself from reaching out to her. ‘Sam will have to meet his wife to discuss what happens to the children,’ he said quickly. ‘I don’t believe his wife has lost all interest in Jimmy. They would need to talk about that.’

  ‘It’s more. We … we were, at least I had brought the subject up when Jimmy ran off on his own. Sam got very angry in the way people do when someone has touched on a problem they don’t want mentioned. For a minute I thought he was going to hit me. Not that he would, not Sam.’ She put a hand to her mouth in a familiar gesture. ‘Oh, Joshua. Here I am, telling you my troubles. It must be upsetting for you listening to me going on and on about Sam and his wife wanting to be divorced. It must make you feel bitter to think that some husbands and wives can’t live together when the wife you loved with all your heart had to die.’

  Joshua stretched out a hand across the table. ‘I’d be a very foolish man to go down that road, Daisy. What we have to do is just carry on. The scales usually balance eventually.’

  ‘Florence wouldn’t believe that.’

  ‘Not even if her beloved Shakespeare had said it?’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I’m damned if I know.’ Joshua stood up and smiled. ‘There they go at last, the Ludo fanatics. I’d hide those games before your next lot of visitors arrive.’

  ‘Thank you for listening to me, Joshua.’

  ‘Any time.’

  They walked up the stairs together, switching off lights as they went. Like a comfortably married couple at the end of a long hard day.

  Chapter Eight

  FLORENCE SAT WITHIN view of the doors, waiting for the taxi driver to walk through them and claim her. She had scorned the suggestion that she went home by ambulance.

  ‘I can walk all right in these slippers,’ she told a nurse, run off her legs by the rush of all the after-Easter admissions. ‘It’s not as if I scalded the soles of my feet. I can manage to walk to the taxi, and out of it into my house. Into my friend’s house,’ she added quickly.

  ‘And you have your appointment for Out-Patients?’

  ‘Engraven on my heart. Thank you.’

  The nurse left Florence sitting there, the small case with her belongings by her side on the bench. A difficult patient. Acerbic and uncooperative. Typical frustrated spinster. Nurse Hornby smiled at the thought of the brand-new engagement ring – three small diamonds in their claw setting – in the top drawer of her dressing-table. What Miss Livesey needed was a man, though she’d probably run a mile if one spared her more than a second glance.

  Florence stared straight ahead. Joshua had offered to come and take her home, but she had refused. The taxi driver appeared and she moved towards the doors with the gingerly steps of a fakir on a practice trot across a bed of hot coals. She wasn’t surprised to see it was raining hard. The way she was feeling sunshine would have seemed like an insult.

  ‘Nice to be going home,’ the driver said, as he helped her into the back of the cab.

  ‘For some,’ said Florence bitterly. ‘Drop me here,’ she said suddenly when they reached the town centre, pointing to an arcade of shops with crowds of holidaymakers pushing their way into it to shelter from the rain.

  ‘As you say, Missus,’ the driver said, fed up to the back teeth with the weather and the way things always seemed to be taking a turn for the worst.

  The letter came by the second post. When Daisy recognized Sam’s writing on the envelope she took it at once up to her room to read it in private.

  Dear Daisy,

  There has been a change of plans. Aileen doesn’t want Jimmy to come back north. She sees a great change in him, and can hardly believe he’s the same boy. She thinks Dorothy must have been fretting for him on the quiet as they got on really well together in Suffolk. She wants me to thank you for looking after him so well, and will be writing to you herself. I know there are still some of his things with you, but he has plenty of clothes to be going on with, and I will collect the rest when I come up to see you. When this will be I can’t say, but I’ll be in touch and let you know the exact date.

  I would feel guilty about all this, as I know you are very fond of Jimmy, but I can’t help realizing how hard it would be for you to have a small boy about the house during your busy season. It wouldn’t have been fair to leave him with you any longer on top of all you have to do.

  I hope Florence’s feet healed quickly. I should imagine she has great powers of resilience. She always reminds me somehow of those pioneer Englishwomen who braved storm and flood in new continents, always keeping up standards and flying the flag at all costs. I can’t imagine blistered feet will get her down for long.

  Do you know I never met your Mr Schofield? I wonder sometimes if he really existed?

  Dear Daisybell, we have a lot to talk about when I see you again. I promise it will be soon. Just parcel Jimmy’s few things up and tuck them out of your way. He seems to be worried about the cat, but Aileen won’t budge on that one. They make her sneeze.

  I will express my gratitude properly when I see you, but I think you know what it meant to me you accepting Jimmy the way you did. They don’t grow them like you very often, Daisybell. You are unique. But then, I’ve said that before, haven’t I?

  See you soon.

  Yours with love,

  Sam

  Daisy had left the door of her room half open so that Joshua saw her struggling to dismantle the camp bed.

  ‘It’s supposed to fold,’ she told him. ‘The legs come off, then you take these struts out and the whole thing goes flat.’

  He jumped at once to t
he wrong conclusion. ‘You’re putting Jimmy in Bobbie’s room? That’s a good idea.’ Getting down on his knees he busied himself with the flimsy bed. ‘I’d start getting used to the notion that Bobbie won’t be coming back here, Daisy. My guess is he’ll get six months at least. He’s got too much pride not to want to move on after he comes out.’ He slid a strut out from the canvas and added it to the pile by his side on the carpet. ‘He sends you his love, by the way, but he doesn’t want to see you. Couldn’t face you, he says.’

  ‘That makes me feel terrible.’ To her horror Daisy began to cry. ‘Does Bobbie think I’m perfect? That I’ve never done a mean thing in my life? That I’m so sanctimonious I would be ashamed to be his friend? Is that the impression I give? That they don’t grow them like me very often? That I am so unique I don’t have feelings like other people? Is that what he thinks? Because that’s the way Sam sees me.’ She groped for her handkerchief in the pocket of her morning apron and found instead Sam’s letter. ‘Here, you might as well read this. There’s nothing personal in it.’

  The tears were running down her cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away.

  ‘Oh, I know I’m stupid. There was something telling me all the time that Jimmy would have to go away sometime. I couldn’t believe that any woman could just give her son away like that.’ She accepted Joshua’s proffered handkerchief. ‘I’d even gone as far as thinking that when Sam and me were married Jimmy would be with us, and in time come to look on me as his mother.’ She blew her nose and pushed the handkerchief and the letter back into her pocket.

  ‘You know what’s wrong with me, Joshua? I’ve seen too many films. Up to coming here I used to go three times a week. One week I’d be Joan Crawford, the next Greta Garbo, and the next one after that Barbara Stanwyck. And most times things turned out all right. But they’re not going to this time, are they? Thank you for not laughing, Joshua. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Do you know that? In spite of being a man.’

  She started to fold one of Jimmy’s grey school shirts, smoothing the collar and tucking in the sleeves. ‘Florence is my friend too, but she’s more critical of me than you are. She sees me straight on.’

  ‘And I don’t?’

  Daisy rolled a striped tie round her fingers. ‘You only see me at my best.’ There was the faintest suspicion of a twinkle in her red-rimmed eyes. ‘An’ because you’re so kind and understanding, I am at my best.’ She thrust a hand inside a grey knee-sock. ‘I’ll mend this before I pack it up. Oh, it’s all too complicated, but what I think I mean is this: in everybody’s life they meet, say, two or three people, sometimes more if they’re lucky, people they are comfortable with. Real true friends. People they could trust to the ends of the earth.’ She examined the second sock carefully. ‘I’m so charged with emotion this morning, I couldn’t feel worse if I’d drunk three sherries straight down. There was a cloud sitting on my head, an’ I couldn’t peer my way through it, but it’s going. At least it’s lifting. It started to lift when I read that letter.’

  ‘Sam’s letter?’ Joshua willed her to carry on.

  ‘Yes, Sam’s letter.’ Daisy got up from the bed. ‘I’d better go back to the kitchen before Winnie collapses under the strain of having to scrape three pounds of carrots.’ She turned round at the door. ‘Thanks for listening to me, Joshua. I’m always saying that, aren’t I?’ She hesitated. ‘But don’t get the wrong idea of me. I’ve done some flamin’ foolish things in my life. Really stupid want-your-head-examining kind of things.’

  ‘Haven’t we all?’ Joshua said, gathering the dismantled bed together. ‘Now tell me where you want me to put this.’

  By late afternoon the sky was purple, thick with storm clouds. If the café in the Arcade hadn’t been so crowded, the waitresses run off their feet, one of them would have noticed the tall gaunt woman drinking endless cups of tea, shuffling to the Ladies, coming back to change tables and ordering yet another pot of tea. Florence had abandoned her case a long time ago. It had been kicked aside and pushed out of the way by holidaymakers hideous in their bedraggled rainwear, the women with permed hair frizzed by the rain, and the men with raindrops dripping from the nebs of their flat caps.

  To Florence every face had a pinched and mean look about it. These people smelled. The odour rising from their damp clothing was turning her fastidious stomach. Blackpool itself was ugly; cheap and nasty, stripped of its so-called glamour by the rain cascading from a gun-metal sky. Coming out of the Arcade Florence turned right instead of left. She didn’t choose to go home yet. There wasn’t much left to her really, was there, but freedom of choice? Resolutely she turned her long-suffering face towards the front.

  Eight million visitors the resort was reported to have had the year before, and Florence calculated that most of them that afternoon were seeking shelter from the rain along the Golden Mile. On a corner of Brunswick Street a patient queue waited outside a palmist’s booth. Florence stopped on the pavement to read the caption:

  ‘Madame Boranev can help you as she has helped others. She will give you sound advice. Come inside and consult her at once! Only one shilling a session.’

  Florence joined the queue.

  ‘You know what it’s like,’ Mrs Mac said, coming in unannounced through the back door to ask Daisy could she possibly lend her such a thing as a cup of arrowroot? ‘They never tell you the exact time you’re being discharged, then when they do you have to wait around for your take-home medicine. They’ll be keeping your friend doped to the eyeballs for a while after a shock like that. Did she ever have St Vitus’s Dance as a child? She always looked to me ready to start twitching.’

  ‘Maybe I got the day wrong.’ Daisy reached up into a cupboard for the packet of arrowroot. ‘She wouldn’t let anyone go and fetch her. She’s so independent she’d run her own shroud up on the sewing machine if she knew exactly when she was going to die.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if she doesn’t work that out for herself,’ Mrs Mac said, pushing the packet behind the bib of her pinny to keep it dry on her way back next door. ‘Not that I’m casting aspersions, but your friend has always struck me as being a mite too big for her boots. A round peg in a square hole, if you get my meaning.’

  Florence emerged from the palmist’s booth muttering to herself. ‘A tall dark man? Marriage within the year, followed by two children? Dear God, it would be funny if it wasn’t so hopelessly untrue.’

  Because she couldn’t help seeing the humour in it, she laughed aloud as she joined the queue outside the peep-show next door. Admission twopence for the privilege of seeing ‘Colonel Barker and his Bride on a Strange Honeymoon’.

  They were displayed down in a pit, the army officer and his bride, with the crowds moving slowly round the top, staring down at the two beds separated by a pedestrian crossing embellished by orange Belisha beacons.

  ‘A crude attempt at sexual innuendo,’ Florence told a girl in front of her with tinselly fair hair and two red rings of rouge high on her cheek-bones.

  ‘Potty,’ the girl told her friend, a large girl with a laugh like a rasp-throated seagull. ‘Take no notice.’

  In one of the beds the fat Colonel lay in his nightshirt; in the other a very young girl in a chiffon nightie, showing thighs blue with cold, a large Dalmatian dog by her side. Florence spotted a bottle of whisky under the bridegroom’s bed.

  ‘Fancy lying there doing nowt for twelve hours a day.’ The fair-haired girl leaned dangerously over the flimsy railing. ‘They say the Colonel’s a woman.’

  ‘That’s why they lie there doing nowt then,’ her bosom friend said. ‘What a rotten two-pennorth!’

  ‘Can’t you see the awful tragedy in it all?’ Florence rounded on them in anger. ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. Shakespeare saw it all!’

  ‘She should be put away.’

  ‘Probably an escaped loony.’

  The bosom friends hurried away, into an arcade of slot machines, where for an outlay of threepence between
them they won a fourpenny packet of Player’s Weights, a twopenny bar of Nestlés chocolate and a pocket mirror. Making their day.

  ‘The first thing I’m going to do when I see I’m on the way to making me pile is to have a telephone installed,’ Daisy informed Mrs Mac when she returned the cup of arrowroot later that afternoon. ‘I could have rung the hospital by now to find out about Florence, or she could have rung me to say what time to expect her. As it is I don’t even know whether I’ve got the right day. I’d run out to the phone box at the end of the street but Winnie says it’s not working.’

  ‘Hoodlums from the caravan sites,’ Mrs Mac said. ‘Rampaging back from the pubs at closing time. Angus says the corporation should step in to have those caravans taken away. It’s no wonder the owners of those sites can charge less than what we do. They’ve got far lower overheads. Our living is precarious enough as it is. Though you have to say one thing in favour of the Depression.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, all those folks who had started fancying going down south and even abroad for their holidays have settled back for Blackpool. Angus says there’s going to be another war, and if he’s right it’ll be like the last time all over again.’ She eased her considerable bulk down on to a chair. ‘Angus’s mother had a lodging-house up by the station during the last war. She had servicemen billeted on her from the beginning. She got three and fourpence a day for each man, but being a good manager she fed them well on one and sixpence a day. Her sister down Bispham way wasn’t so lucky. She had Belgian refugees plonked on her and only got ten shillings a week for them. But her other sister over in the Isle of Man came off worst. They stopped the steamers going over, you see.’

  ‘Those two ladies in number four have asked for a tray of tea in their bedroom.’ Winnie’s face round the door was stiff with disapproval. ‘Why can’t they have it in the lounge with all the rest?’

  ‘You should start off the way you mean to go on.’ Mrs Mac waited until Winnie had left the kitchen, stoop-shouldered from the weight of two cups and saucers, a small teapot and a tiny milk-jug and sugar-basin. ‘I don’t stop my lot from coming in out of the rain, but I don’t provide tea. You try putting it down as extras on their bills and see where that gets you.’