The Daisy Club

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Laura?’ she stated with perfect diction, and very obvious loyalty. ‘Laura did everything perfectly at Twistleton Court, as she always does. She is a very beautiful young woman, and she and I, and the others that did the course together, are all the greatest friends.’

  David seemed to accept this, although she noticed that he did throw back his drink rather too quickly.

  ‘This is all rather awkward,’ he said, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This, everything, all this, you and I, both of us here. The war. It is all a little difficult, at least so it seems to me.’

  ‘You’re not really making a great deal of sense, which is only understandable.’

  David looked at Daisy, who tried to give him her best casual look in return, while actually looking resolutely vague.

  ‘No, I know, well, I wouldn’t make sense, would I?’

  ‘Being at war—’ Daisy began again.

  ‘Nothing to do with being at war, I only wish it was.’

  Daisy looked away this time, trying like mad to avoid his disturbing intensity.

  ‘Look – we have to sort this out.’

  Daisy stood up.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No, we don’t have to sort anything out. I must go – so much to do before tomorrow.’

  David stood up as she left their table, but she knew that his eyes were following her, and that they both knew that she was lying.

  As for Daisy, she was only too happy to drive to the relevant factory the next morning and fling herself into a plane, and fly off into the skies. She would not and could not have anything more to do with David. It would be a betrayal of everything that she believed in, most particularly friendship and loyalty. They were more important than some passing attraction, and always would be.

  Chapter Eight

  Freddie was aware that she should be busy hating the enemy, but though she tried hard she could not do it. For her, war was not about hatred, it was all about trying to put innocent people together again, people of all kinds, and of all nationalities. It was no good hating someone you were trying to mend.

  Jean knew no hate, either, being a part of the land, being guided by the weather, living by the seasons – hay hastily brought in before the weather changed, wheat ripening, cows grazing, hoping, always hoping, for good things to come had been part of her young life since her grandmother had first taught her how to milk a cow, which was why when she saw what she recognised as pure hate in Mrs Huggett’s eyes, she was stunned.

  ‘You are what?’ she asked Jean.

  ‘I am having a baby.’

  ‘Not here, you’re not, my gel. Not here. You can take yourself, and your so-called baby, somewhere else.’

  ‘But, Mrs Huggett, but – Mrs Huggett—’ Jean suddenly discovered what swallowing hard and having a dry mouth, both at the same time, was like. ‘This is Joe’s baby. And we are married.’

  Mrs Huggett’s eyes seemed to grow smaller and smaller until they almost disappeared into her face, so narrow did they become.

  ‘You married Joe? You married Joe? You?’

  Jean had never heard anyone say ‘you’ like that before. It made her feel as if she was something on the back of the dung cart that still called regularly at The Cottages – and not a very nice something, either – but she was determined not to show her fear, or how awful she felt.

  ‘Well, actually, Mrs Huggett, Joe married me. On a twenty-four-hour pass from training college.’

  Mrs Huggett breathed in and out again, and for a few seconds it seemed to Jean that the older woman’s chest was a pair of bellows, very well-covered bellows, of course, but bellows none the same.

  ‘Joe,’ she finally said, ‘is no longer at training college. He has been pulled in to fly ops, despite not finishing the course. They need everyone they can get, even unfinished boys.’

  There was a small silence as Jean frowned, and wondered whether this made any difference to their being married, and then, realising it couldn’t, remained silent, if mystified.

  Mrs Huggett stood up.

  ‘Look, I am very sorry you have got yourself in the family way,’ she said, altering her tone of voice to that of a rector’s wife visiting the unfortunate. ‘But the truth is that I can have nothing more to do with you, and when Joe gets back I shall have to tell him so. We do not cross the tracks in our family, we simply do not, and it is just as well for you to know that from now on. Whether you like it or not, you are on your own, Miss Shaw.’

  ‘Mrs Huggett, actually.’

  Susan Huggett rang the bell to the side of the fireplace and waited, and then, remembering that the maid had left that morning to go to work in a factory, she sighed.

  ‘I will show you out, Miss Shaw—’

  ‘Mrs Huggett—’

  ‘But please do understand, you will never be welcome here at Holly House, never, ever.’

  Jean walked down the hill back to The Cottages and let herself in. Her new evacuees were all busy in the back garden planting out heaven only knew what, and only heaven would know. Her first evacuees having been taken smartly back to the East End by their mother – because they couldn’t cope with no chip shop, no cinema and no indoor lavatory – the dear Ropley boys, newly orphaned by the war, had arrived to take their place, and settled into Twistleton and The Cottages as if they were born to life in a small village.

  Not only that, but what with being outside all day long, and helping about the farm from dawn to dusk, they were both now proud possessors of healthy appetites, and having swiftly grown used to appreciating Jean’s home cooking, would not now care to eat anything from a tin. Which was another source of pride to her, or would have been had she not become pregnant, since when cooking had become an agony of discomfort, most particularly in the early morning.

  She could tell almost no one about her changed state, for the good reason that Mrs Huggett would not acknowledge that she was Joe’s legal wife. And since Joe and she had tied the knot many miles away – for obvious reasons – their marriage and her pregnancy had remained a secret, although as time passed that would, of course, stop. She did, however, tell Freddie, because she knew that Freddie could help her when the time came for her to go to a hospital or find a doctor – or nowadays, more likely, a midwife.

  ‘I am so happy for you,’ Freddie said, and then she walked back to the hospital, where, she knew, she would soon be busy helping to deliver even more babies. Yet, even as the warning wail of the siren started she could not stop worrying about Jean. How would she manage to farm the acres she had valiantly taken on, and look after her cows and sheep, if she was pregnant, and then, later, saddled with a baby?

  A few minutes later there was little time to think about Jean, and even less to help get patients out of their beds, and safely underneath them. If they couldn’t do this in an air raid the nurses had been told to cover the poor creatures with whatever was at hand.

  A few minutes later she heard herself saying to an elderly patient, ‘Don’t try to get out of bed, Mr Taplow, you’re going to be quite safe. We’re going to protect you by putting this door over you.’

  Really, what a thing – poor man! As Mr Taplow shrieked with terror at the idea of being covered by a door, Freddie turned to Sister, who was always at such pains to try to do without help from the VAD nurses and murmured, ‘I’m not sure that this won’t make matters worse . . .’

  ‘An order is an order, Miss Valentyne, no matter what,’ Sister said, raising her voice to a commanding level. ‘Mr Taplow must be covered, and we have been advised that for those patients unable to get under their beds, being covered by a door will be most effective.’

  Her mouth tightened, and she walked on, leaving Freddie and a fellow-VAD nurse to pick the door up from under Mr Taplow’s bed, and cover the hapless fellow, an action which, Freddie imagined, was likely to kill him quicker than any bomb.

  The news vendors in London were daily recording victory over the enemy, their boards sugg
esting more that a cricket match was being fought overhead, than a fight to the death for the survival of a nation: ‘MESSERSCHMITTS SEVEN – HURRICANES THREE’. And even this score would soon be changed to give a more hopeful result, a little moment of forgivable fiction on behalf of the vendors, knowing as they did that even as the buildings behind their stands crumbled, everyone needed to think that the battle overhead was being won.

  Daisy, herself, was fighting a losing battle. In the ghastly chaos of those weeks when German victory seemed imminent, she had tried to avoid even thinking of David, and yet the more the losses overhead mounted, the more she realised that fighting her desire to bring loving comfort to at least one young pilot was ludicrous. They were both in the same fight. Maybe Laura would not mind? Maybe Daisy should, after all, answer the little notes David kept sending her, begging her to meet him.

  She struggled to find a reason not to see him again. She wrote to him that she was too busy, and yet all the time she knew that he might be dead tomorrow, so what did it matter what happened between the sheets? The last straw was when one of her new ATA friends was killed by, of all things, friendly fire! All of a sudden ‘what did it matter?’ became a cruel reality, and more than that, she realised that it was not just David who might not be alive tomorrow, it was her, too. And she knew that she needed love, quite desperately.

  When they met up again, in the pub of course, they both knew it was hopeless, and having chucked back their drinks they ran off into the night.

  They did not speak, they looked, and unexpressed thoughts became action as they tore each other’s clothes off and climbed into bed together, refuge having been found in a local hotel.

  ‘Passion and war have always gone hand in hand,’ David murmured afterwards, perhaps to assuage his own guilt, even as Daisy realised with gratitude that he knew about women: what they liked, how they felt. Then she allowed her guilt, and the realisation of what she had undoubtedly done to Laura, to hit her.

  ‘We must never speak of this to anyone,’ she said, having managed to run a bath of two inches of rusty water. With a few expert movements, she brushed out her long blonde hair, put it up, and stepped into the water.

  But before she could begin to wash herself with a precious piece of soap, David took her in his arms. Why would they speak of it to anyone else? he wondered silently. To whom would he speak? A matter of moments passed. They washed each other tenderly, and then they re-dressed in their uniforms, Daisy doing up her long suspenders to hold up her knee-length stockings, David watching her with a strange feeling of possessive pride. Daisy kissed him goodbye, upstairs, and then they both left by separate entrances, knowing that they might never see each other again. It was only as David drove away that he started to wonder: would Daisy give the same comfort to all the pilots? He drove faster, telling himself that he did not care if she did, knowing all the while that he cared far too much.

  Daisy returned to her ferrying duties as always – thankfully, welcoming doing anything and everything to take her mind off what was happening to David – and then, returning on leave to Twistleton Court, was met by a white-faced Freddie.

  ‘Who?’ she managed to ask.

  Freddie shook her head, unable to speak for a little while.

  Daisy wanted to shake Freddie, and scream at her, ‘Is it David Moreton?’ It was ridiculous, because Freddie wouldn’t know David Moreton from Hermann Goering. Instead she stood stock still as Freddie collapsed on a hall chair, and the message that had been brought from the village fell to the ground. Daisy picked it up. It was from Jean. Joe Huggett had been killed twelve hours earlier. His plane had been shot down.

  Daisy was staggered, quite unable to believe that Joe, who had always been such a mischievous cherub, Joe the baby of the village, always being cuffed by someone, and hugged by someone else, was gone, that they would never see him again. She couldn’t cry, wouldn’t cry, because crying was such a blasted waste of badly needed energy. That was a lesson that the war had already taught her – you had to conserve what little reserves you had, from minute to minute, not even hour to hour. Don’t waste energy, hang on to every ounce. Besides which, there was usually no time to cry, which was another lesson quickly learned.

  ‘They’ve only just been married, and now—’

  Freddie had to hurry down to The Cottages to comfort Jean, who had sent the message up to the Court, but before she went she and Daisy kissed each other quickly on the cheeks, which everyone had lately become quite accustomed to doing, even if they were only going shopping, knowing, as they all did, that it might be the last time they saw each other. But then, before Freddie could leave, Daisy stopped her.

  ‘Wait a minute, when did Joe and Jean marry?’

  Freddie turned impatiently.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. Besides, what does it matter when they married? What does it matter? I just hope the shock doesn’t cause her to lose the baby.’

  ‘Baby? Baby? She’s having a baby?’

  ‘Yes, you know, one of those small things that people push about in prams, that have to be given bottles, and aren’t nearly as pretty as foals.’

  Freddie fled out of the door as Daisy put the message on the table, and went to sit down on the chair that Freddie had vacated. But she couldn’t settle. For some reason there was no one else about at the Court – they were out, or busying themselves somewhere – and only Daisy was left alone with her thoughts, restless, unable to even switch on the wireless for fear of hearing of some new disaster, new bad news, brought to her by courtesy of the BBC.

  Oh dear God, little Joe Huggett, dead. Loved by all, would be missed by all, never known to have done a bad or an ungenerous thing. Lovely, funny Joe no longer coming back. Lovely funny Joe, one of those rare people whose warmth came into a room with him, leaving it colder when he left.

  Over the next few hours she became obsessed that it had been one of her planes that Joe had been piloting. Maybe that Hurricane that she had delivered so proudly, and in record time, to the airstrip after she and David had made love? It was not long before making love to David, Laura’s love, turned into an indigestible lump of guilt. Maybe it was her wickedness at making love with her friend’s boyfriend, whom she knew to be her friend’s boyfriend, that had brought bad luck to Joe? Maybe it had.

  For want of anything else to do, Daisy went outside and started to walk round the grounds with the dachshunds happily following her. Walking, and walking, and walking, trying to get Joe’s cherub-like mischievous young face out of her mind. His too-long hair, his engaging grin, everything about him, but everything, a tribute to youth and gaiety.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ she told the trees they were passing. ‘I just can’t. I can’t stay and be amidst all this silent sorrow. I have to get back.’ And as she passed the trees she thought she could hear Aunt Maude’s voice murmuring of the silent cities that were the war graves in France, of Maude’s beloved Beresford brothers all but one lost in the Great War, and she remembered with shame how she had turned away from her aunt’s silent sorrow, impatient with the grief of the previous generation, eager only to get on with her own life.

  Unable to face any more guilt, Daisy fled back to the house, packed her overnight bag, shut the dogs in the boot room, and headed out to her car. Branscombe, having hoarded petrol in everything from what looked like jam jars to feed buckets, quickly filled up her tank for her, and Daisy drove off, leaving Twistleton without regret.

  As she drove back to the factory, she realised it was not just her guilt over David, it was also the fear that she might suddenly bump into Laura, that had driven her back to her duties in less than a day. She also knew that she was too cowardly to face the sight of Jean’s grief. It was despicable, and it meant that she was even less of a good person, but on the other hand, at least when she was on duty she knew what she was doing. She had to fly every and any make of aircraft sometimes two and three times a day, from their factories to the airfields waiting for them, and do it all without th
e guidance of a radio, following the rivers and towns, often in appalling conditions – because there was no alternative. But even so, it was easier than coping with the reality of sorrow. Battling on, fighting, was easier than facing the awful solemnity of grief.

  And they did all have to battle on, stunned with horror at what was happening to their friends and their homes, trying to forget the news of losses, making plans to shoot themselves rather than be captured.

  Over the next few weeks the overhead battles between the might of Hitler’s air force and the slender resources of the British increased to an unbearable extent. Yet the British quickly learned to use their Spitfires to pass beneath the German bombers, while the Hurricanes attacked the ‘Flying Pencils’ and the Spitfires provided top cover. It was to prove a winning tactic.

  The losses were nevertheless terrific. Day after bloodied day, the realisation of who would never return was set aside by the brave young pilots, until, at last, they came to realise that, amazingly, somehow – and nobody really knew how – the Nazis had been temporarily rebuffed.

  It was not that the war had stopped, for even as Churchill warned that it was only the ‘end of the beginning’ people everywhere had grown all too used to seeing dog-fights overhead, trails of smoke streaking the late summer sky, so that even schoolboys only paused momentarily in their work to watch parachutists gliding down to earth. The aerial battle had become such a common sight. And now, the first of these battles had been won, but at what cost they could not contemplate. They only knew that somehow, and no one really knew how, the worst had not quite happened. They had won a victory in the air. The Nazi invasion was temporarily halted.

  Branscombe had watched Miss Daisy driving away with mixed feelings. He liked Miss Daisy, more than that, he had grown really quite fond of her over the years. Well, he would have, wouldn’t he? After all he’d watched her growing up, albeit from afar, given the continuing silence between the Court and the Hall. She had turned out a good ’un though, that Miss Daisy. Quite a sight, nowadays, in her air uniform, an ATA girl indeed, from the tip of her blonde head to her shining heels; not to mention being a chip off the old block, if ever there was one.