by Marie Joseph
‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’ Her smile was warm and direct. ‘You’ve been a pillar of strength, Joshua.’
‘You won’t let me do as much as I’d like to. I haven’t done all that much.’
‘You’ve been there, to hold my hand when things went wrong.’ Her laugh was infectious. ‘Like me trusting Winnie with the ledger, and her booking two honeymoon couples into the same room for the same week.’
‘That could have been tricky, I admit.’
‘Or the time a tap was left running in a wash basin and that commercial traveller didn’t wake up till his bed was floating out of the door. The lights fused and everyone came out on the landing for a paddle at one o’clock in the morning. You were marvellous then, Joshua.’
‘You’d have coped.’ Joshua spoke so sharply that Daisy stared at him in surprise. ‘You’re what is called a tough cookie, as they say in American films.’
‘I’d much rather be a fragile flower.’
Joshua pointed at an iron bench with its back towards the cliff drive. ‘Let’s sit here for a while. I want to talk to you.’
Daisy was quite content to sit quietly, waiting for Joshua to collect his thoughts. She knew him so well by now. Never an impetuous man, apart from that one time when he had drunk too much and kissed her passionately. She smiled at the memory. Joshua was a man of integrity. A true gentleman, as her mother would have said. Modest to a fault. It was only recently that she had picked up a letter from the mat addressed to Captain Penny, MC. He never used that form of address, he had said, taking the letter from her quickly. MCs were two a penny, he had said when she tried to talk to him about it, his eyes twinkling at the terrible pun.
It was a beautiful night, with a full moon sending silvered beams across the faintly murmuring sea far below. Such a perfect setting for what Joshua had to say, and he wasn’t going to bungle it this time. Sitting close to her, filled with love for her, he reached for her hand. At once her fingers curled into his palm.
‘How would it be if we got married?’ he said.
Daisy stared at him for a while. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that, Joshua. I love you, but not in that way. I never want to feel that way again.’ She smiled. ‘What I feel for you is the warmth of a loving friendship. I like you and admire you. I wish I had a quarter of your stability, your confidence, your belief in yourself.’
‘Is that how you see me?’ He sounded deflated, almost bitter, very sad.
‘Yes, it is.’ She hesitated. ‘Since Sam I don’t trust my own judgement. I feel safe now, you see. I’m no longer looking for admiration. I hate to even think about Sam. I am so angry with him for being the cause of me behaving so stupidly. He humiliated me, Joshua. He diminished me, and, maybe unfairly, I can’t forgive him for that. It was self-inflicted, I know, but still I can’t forgive him. I never want to hear from him or see him again. What I felt for Sam can’t ever dissolve into friendship. I was weeping and laughing at the same time. I was either dizzy with happiness, or drowning in despair. I am never going to go through that again, Joshua.’
‘And what about how I feel?’ He was only human, so very much in love. ‘I want you, Daisy. I want to touch you when you stand before me; when you laugh I want to hold you and be part of that laughter. I am a normal man, Daisy, and in spite of what you think, far from old enough to be your father!’
‘Did I say that?’
‘You did.’
She looked at him, at his strong profile, the firm set of his jaw, and knew in that moment how easy it would be to say yes and be married to this lovely man. Before Sam, she would have accepted his proposal without reservation, knowing that men like Joshua Penny didn’t grow on trees. Her mother would have adored Joshua.
‘I do love you.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘But not in the way a woman should love a man if they are going to. …’ The darkness hid her blush, but she could feel it warming her cheeks.
‘Make love?’ Joshua’s voice was cold.
‘Well, yes.’
‘You mean I repel you physically?’
‘Oh, no!’ She turned to him in distress.
‘But you had no objections to Sam. …’
Joshua wished the words unsaid, but it was too late. He had convinced himself he had forgotten Florence’s hysterical betrayal of her friend’s secret; he had closed his bedroom door quickly that night on the sight of Daisy creeping down the stairs in her nightgown. He had heard her come back when Jimmy cried out, and he had sworn that he would put both episodes firmly out of his mind.
‘I love you, Daisy.’ He tried to draw her to him and felt her stiffen before she jerked away. ‘You’ve got me in such a turmoil I say the wrong thing. I’m terrified of you rejecting me. I vowed never to love again after my wife died. I would never risk such hurt, such pain. But I want you. You’ve shown me I can be happy again.’ He pulled her down beside him when she tried to stand up. ‘Daisy! Please listen to me. I want to marry you and cherish you. Can’t you understand? I want you to bear our child.’
Daisy heard nothing more than the impassioned pleading in his voice. The words slid over her as she sat there feeling sick, choked with the shame of him finding out, of knowing about, of believing that she and Sam. …
‘There was nothing! I didn’t! We never. …’ Ingrained guilt, the unbalanced sense of shame bred in her and carefully nurtured in her since childhood surfaced. If Joshua had accused her of murder she would have felt less ashamed, less embarrassed and humiliated. He probably thought now that she was – what was the phrase her mother had often used? – easy meat. If she were foolish enough to marry him he would throw it back in her face during their first tiff. Her mother had said men always did that. He would be jealous if she as much as joked with the coalman or asked the milkman in for a cup of tea. He would never trust her, never respect her no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise. She had heard it all so often it came out in her mind as pat as if she were reciting the Creed.
‘Even if there was a …’ she groped for the telling word ‘… that kind of spark between us, Joshua, I wouldn’t marry you. You misjudge me, but that doesn’t matter. I have only myself to blame.’
‘I blame you for nothing!’ Joshua was growing more exasperated by the minute. At himself for making such a hash of things and at Daisy for thinking it mattered whether she and Sam. … ‘I love you,’ was all he could say. ‘For you as you are.’
‘Warts and all?’ she asked coldly.
‘Warts and all,’ he said. ‘No! That’s not true. To me there are no warts.’ He rubbed his forehead with a clenched fist. ‘What the hell are we talking about? I’m damned if I know.’
‘I was refusing your proposal,’ Daisy said stiffly, the shame still on her.
‘Then I would like to give you a month’s notice to quit my room.’ Joshua took out his pipe and curved his hand round the comfort of its rounded bowl. ‘I had decided to go anyway.’
But not in anger like this, he thought, not with this stupid misunderstanding between us. In a strangely paradoxical way they were too honest with each other, too close, if that were possible.
‘I am only human,’ he burst out, provoked by her silence. ‘I can’t be with you every day, seeing you, living with you in the same house. Not wanting you the way I do.’
‘Then of course you must go,’ Daisy said. She got up and began to walk quickly away. ‘Stay there and finish your pipe, Joshua. I’d like to be by myself for a while.’
He made no attempt to follow her. What would have been the use? Her temper was up. He could tell that by the way she was wagging her bottom as she walked. Damn her! He knew her so well, with an intimacy that went beyond friendship. Far, far beyond that. Couldn’t she see?
He puffed ferociously at his pipe, then knocked it out on the iron bench. He walked without slackening speed all the way along the promenade to South Shore, oblivious to the wide sweep of the night-blue sky above him and the soft murmur of the sea on the sands below. He walked li
ke a man with a purpose, who knew where he was going, when in reality the truth was he was going nowhere at all.
‘Mr Penny has every right to move. To better himself,’ Daisy told Winnie the day after Joshua had moved his belongings out of Shangri-La. ‘That room of his is very cramped, you know, and the place he’s going to is more of a flat. With his own kitchen and sitting room.’
The cat was scratching to be let in, and when Winnie opened the door he shot straight up the stairs making, they knew, for Joshua’s empty room.
‘It’s half of a headmistress’s house, isn’t it?’ Winnie was wearing her know-all expression. ‘Mrs Mac told me mam he’s been friendly with that teacher for years. They’re much of an age, and of course they’ll have a lot in common.’ The end of a pink tongue protruded as she grated bread on to a board. ‘Mrs Mac says she’s not a bit like an old maid. Smart. You know. With a lovely slim figure. Mrs Mac knows the woman who does her washing. She says Miss Halliwell never wears a vest, not even in winter, and that all her nighties have lace on them. She gets them from Affleck and Brown’s in Manchester.’
‘Is there anything Mrs Mac doesn’t know?’ Daisy was flushed and unaccountably furious. ‘Why do people always expect a hot meal when there’s a heatwave going on outside?’ Sliding a roasting tin of sizzling fat from the oven, she emptied a pan of par-boiled potatoes into it. ‘They’d turn up their noses at a nice green salad and a plate of cold ham and hard-boiled eggs.’
‘Bet you wish I’d told you that Miss Halliwell was boss-eyed and bandy-legged, don’t you?’ Winnie’s expression was sly. ‘But I cannot tell a lie.’
‘Mr Penny came straight here to live the week after his wife’s funeral,’ Mrs Mac told Daisy. ‘They had a little house, but he wanted nothing from it. Gave a lot of good stuff to the Salvation Army by all accounts. He was proper poorly, Mrs Entwistle used to tell me, but he never missed a day off work.’ She tapped her front. ‘Chest. Lungs filled with mustard gas during the war. They’re never the same; it can work its way through the system years afterwards. So it’s nice he’s got a little place of his own after all this time.’ She fanned her hot face with her apron. ‘This flamin’ job of ours is three months’ hard labour and nine months’ solitary confinement. My ankles are up like balloons again with this heat. She’s a nice lady,’ she went on, ‘this headmistress he’s living with. I expect you met her when you had young Jimmy here? She was head of his school.’
‘Of the Juniors, not the Infants. No, I never met her.’ But I know she has lace on her knickers, Daisy thought, whipping a tin of evaporated milk into a half-set jelly to have with ice cream for dessert that day. ‘I’m glad Mr Penny is settled,’ she said firmly. ‘I only wish I could say the same for Mr Schofield. I heard from him the other day to say he won’t be coming back here when he comes out of prison. He’s asked me to pack his things ready for collection. It’s obvious he can’t face coming back here.’
‘It’s a disease,’ Mrs Mac said. ‘So they say. Like drinking too much.’ She got up to go. ‘Not in my book it isn’t. Light-fingered greediness. Thieving. Why don’t they give it to them straight? The same with alcoholics. Weak-willed ninnies, that’s all they are. They’ll be making excuses for murderers next, saying it’s all right to kill your mother if she never tucked you in and kissed you goodnight when you were a child. The same with adulterers. …’ She was warming to her subject. ‘They can always say no. I’d sit down if I were you,’ she told Daisy. ‘I’d say you were having a hot flush if I didn’t know you were too young to be having an early change. I’m giving my lot pineapple chunks tonight, out of a tin. You’ll live and learn. That’s if you haven’t worked yourself into an early grave through being over-conscientious.’
‘And the best of luck to you, too,’ Daisy said underneath her breath. ‘With a friend like you, dear Mrs Mac, I’ll never want for an enemy, that’s for sure.’
In August Daisy put Winnie’s wages up to a pound a week, with her keep. The wash basins in the bedrooms and the separate tables in the dining room had lent ‘tone’ to Shangri-La. Most of her bookings now were from personal recommendation.
‘Mrs Mac is talking about having wash basins put in her best bedrooms,’ Winnie told Daisy with glee. ‘She knows she’ll have to do something if she wants to keep up with us. You’re feeling all right, aren’t you, Daisy?’ Her thin pointed face was suddenly sharp with worry. ‘Mrs Mac told me mam she thinks you’re wearing yourself to a frazzle. She thinks you’re pining for that chap from London.’
‘Which one was that?’ Daisy flipped a double sheet over to Winnie’s side of the bed they were changing. ‘We’ll miss the laundry man if we don’t look sharp. C’mon, love. Get your skates on.’
There were days, and this was one of them, when Daisy was so overworked, so rushed, she felt she would meet herself coming back if she wasn’t careful. Winnie was a joy and a treasure, there was no doubt about that, but she never worked from her own initiative. Daisy knew she had to spell things out for her, sometimes show her how to do the simplest tasks, over and over again.
Could a person die of tiredness, she asked herself seriously as she carried the sheets down into the kitchen and folded them into the laundry basket. And now she had to find the time to give the stairs a good brush-down before doing the shopping. A woman to do the rough, that would be the answer, a good woman in a sacking pinny with arms on her like ham shanks. At times she’d been tempted to advertise, then caution stepped in. Everything had cost so much more than she and Uncle Arnold had reckoned on it doing, and the insurance for cleaning the carpets after the flood hadn’t come through yet. Daisy ran upstairs with the dustpan and a stiff handbrush. But for Joshua taking the whole thing in hand, she might not have been promised a penny. There was a tenacity to Joshua she’d never suspected.
There was half Blackpool’s beach trodden into her stair carpet, lurking behind the stair-rods and settling in the corners. Oh dear God, but she was on her knees, figuratively as well as literally. Daisy blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and thought longingly of a dip in the sea.
There was still the shopping to do. She ran over in her mind the list for the day. The basic groceries were delivered twice a week, thank goodness for small mercies, but any landlady worth her salt knew the importance of carrying on a personal relationship with her butcher. Almost like a love affair really. She had planned on mince that day, but only freshly made from best stewing steak. Daisy knew she was good at chatting and laughing with the red-faced butcher, but supervising the way he fed the meat into the mincer at the same time. Not a lump of fat or gristle would go through if Daisy kept her eyes skinned. There was a determined jutting of her chin as she planned the menus for the next few days.
A nice piece of top-side, she thought, for a special treat for Sunday, and for Saturday brisket pressed into the big basin to have with salad and potato cakes as the weather had turned so warm. The sweat was running into her eyes and her back ached with nagging persistence. Reminding her of Florence and how she had suffered once a month.
Daisy rested for a moment. Florence, Bobbie, Jimmy and Joshua. And Sam. All gone from her, leaving her alone. With too much to do; far too much to do. Last night she had been exhausted past the point of sleep, tossed and turned for ages, then wakened up tired.
She was in what she privately called one of her ‘bring on the violins’ moods. Sorry for herself and sickening with it. Zasu Pitts, the tearful comedienne with her drooping jowls, Greta Garbo in Camille, dying beautifully and taking her time about it. Daisy lengthened her face into mock misery, rolling her eyes and groaning at the same time.
‘Daisy! What’s the matter?’ Winnie’s pointed mousy face was on a level with her own as she stared anxiously through the banister rails. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’
‘Not ill.’ Daisy’s eyes were twinkling again. ‘Just sick to my very soul with life and its vicissitudes.’
‘Aw, them,’ said Winnie. ‘I never have no truck with them.’
‘Wise,’ said Daisy. ‘Very wise.’ She began brushing away at the carpet again. ‘Ah well, KBO I suppose.’
‘KBO?’
‘Keep buggering on,’ said Daisy, dead-pan.
At the end of August Daisy received a letter from Sam. There was no lifting of her heart when she recognized his writing on the envelope, no frantic urge to open it and read what he had to say over and over again. The anger in her had gone; the disbelief that she could ever have felt such agony of mind remained.
Sam wrote to tell her that he had found just the job he had hoped for, as assistant to the engineering manager of a large road transport company in North London. At a salary of £500 a year. He had underlined this, and Daisy could just imagine him saying it with an impudent grin and a lift of an eyebrow. He was back with Aileen, and it looked as though the bad times were behind them. At least he hoped so. Daisy turned over a page. The children were spending a couple of weeks in Suffolk with Queenie and having a whale of a time with the weather being so lovely. There was no way he could find adequate words to thank her for all her kindness. There was a corner of his heart kept specially for her, and he hoped she was able to find a little time to enjoy this wonderful sunshine. He remained, hers with affection, Sam.
Daisy put the letter at the back of her dressing-table drawer, behind her stockings, took it out again, tore it across and threw it away.
Joshua kept in touch with her too, but not by letter. He called round twice and found her in the kitchen both times, doing three things at once, as usual.
‘You look well.’ Daisy said it quietly, carrying on with what she was doing.
‘You look tired,’ he told her, refusing to sit down, standing stiff and serious by the door with his arms folded and his expression stern.
She wanted to weep. For some inexplicable reason she wanted to go to him and have him put his arms around her to feel his gentleness, and his strength. His presence made her feel so vulnerable she wished he would go and leave her alone. Yet when he went she never knew how the sound of a door closing could hurt so much.
