The Daisy Club

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Time to put on the hay bags!’ Branscombe announced, following which they all poured, chattering and laughing, down to the kitchens below, where there were so many cooking pots bubbling, and there was so much going on in the old ovens, that the fact that most of the food was not what it once would have been, even a year before, was quite forgotten in the warmth of the moment.

  ‘Will you have to go back quite soon?’

  It was almost like the old days, with Freddie and Daisy sitting up in a flat above the stables, only, this flat was at the Hall, not the Court, and they were each nursing a gin, which they would never have done before the war, and there was no notice declaring that only members of the Daisy Club were admitted.

  ‘Yes, tomorrow, I am afraid. I must go back and carry on. The war may be being won on the factory floor, but it is also being won from the factory floor!’ Daisy joked.

  Freddie looked crestfallen.

  ‘Oh, I had hoped that you would be able to be with us a little longer.’

  This statement amused Daisy, because it now seemed to her that their roles were reversed, and that where once Daisy had been the daughter of the Hall, now Freddie seemed to have taken her place, in every way.

  ‘You are coping so well here, it seems that really, in essence, the village has become the Hall,’ she said, changing the subject in an attempt to cheer Freddie up.

  Freddie gave a weak smile. Coping! She would hardly call what she did ‘coping’ – struggling, perhaps, but not coping.

  ‘Everyone is pulling together,’ she conceded, after a second. ‘But we all miss you terribly, Daisy. We pray for your safety every night. Specially Aunt Maude, she misses you so much. She is so different now you are back, smiling unexpectedly, and laughing, which she hardly ever does, or has done. And I miss you, and the Daisy Club, so much, really I do. It would be so nice if you could come back more often, but you can’t: what you are doing is vital.’

  Daisy sipped her gin, realising from what Freddie had just said that Freddie must be very lonely. More than lonely, if she was missing Daisy so very much. Freddie’s war was very different from Daisy’s war. Freddie had to cope with all the various people now clustered, one way or another, under the roof at the Hall, and yet, at close of play, she had no one with whom she could go to the pub and have some fun.

  Daisy might be flying planes, she might be delivering them to airfields which on one day would seem to be seething with young pilots, and the next completely deserted – if there had been a lash-up – but at least she was with people her own age.

  Freddie, when not rushed off her feet, nursing under very trying conditions, or looking after Ted, was really quite friendless, particularly now Jean was gone.

  But it was Freddie’s turn to change the subject.

  ‘The Huggetts won’t acknowledge Ted, you know.’

  Daisy stared.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because, you know – Jean. Well, Jean was from The Cottages.’

  ‘Snooty?’

  ‘“Snooty is as snooty does” is what Branscombe says.’

  ‘I hate snobbery, do you know that?’ Daisy stated with sudden passion. ‘Preference is fine, we all have our likes and dislikes, but snobbery is so cruel, and has nothing to do with good manners. Snobbery makes me feel quite sick. I was thinking the other day that if there was one thing about the war, it does seem to have brought everyone together, and done away with petty attitudes.’

  ‘I think it has. I see that on the wards, everyone helping everyone else. Yes, war has brought us together, everyone not caring who or where someone is from, not minding in the least, only wanting what is best – except for people like the Huggetts!’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know about Ted? Perhaps no one has told them about Jean and Ted?’

  ‘Oh, they know, all right. Your aunt wrote to them several times. Wrote to them about the christening. Wrote to them about how many teeth he had, what he was getting for Christmas, all that kind of thing, but not a word back. She is furious, you know, as well she should be. Abandoning a grandchild like that is inconceivable, most especially since he is Joe’s only child, his son.’

  Daisy knocked back her gin, and then lit her cigarette.

  ‘Anyone heard anything from Laura, do you know?’

  Freddie shook her head sadly.

  ‘Nothing. And we’re not allowed to know either, although Aurelia wrote to me in heavy-handed code that “a friend of our mutual acquaintance is at this time missing, believed to be abroad”.’

  ‘Laura was a FANY. FANYs don’t go abroad, they stay at home ferrying officers about in military motor cars and getting taken out to The Four Hundred.’

  ‘Not all of them, Daisy.’

  ‘Damn, damn, damn. I suppose – oh God, I suppose she has only gone and volunteered for something madly dangerous?’

  Freddie looked away.

  ‘She’ll be back soon, I expect. We all hope – back soon, don’t let’s trouble trouble, eh? I know the last time I saw her at the Daisy Club, at your flat, she was looking pretty determined, pretty whiz-bang, a bit of a Catherine wheel look about her.’

  Daisy looked away, guilt now pouring over her like molten lead, like boiling oil, blistering her very soul.

  The following morning, making sure this time to kiss everyone firmly on the cheek, she set off after a breakfast composed mostly, it seemed to her, of fried eggy bread, and chicory coffee.

  ‘Don’t wave, don’t wave!’

  Waving goodbye was now said to be bad luck, just as kissing people, if only before they went to the shops, had become routine.

  Maude and Branscombe, with baby Ted on his leading reins, did not wave her off, but watched Daisy, manoeuvring the car as fast as possible down the grassy, bumpy path that had once been the drive, until the moment that she disappeared from sight.

  ‘I only hope that she doesn’t drive the whole way at that speed. If she does she’ll have run out of petrol before she reaches Wychford,’ Branscombe remarked, as they all three, baby Ted leading the way, turned to go back into the house.

  Maude nodded. Branscombe was right. She pushed the hall door open. She sighed, and sighed again. Suddenly feeling tired, because she was all too aware now that every time she said goodbye to Daisy she did, as the song said, die a little. It was her age. Or it was memories. Something. But the truth was with each ‘goodbye’ a little of her went away, never to come back.

  Sensing Miss Maude’s mood, the dark cloud hovering above her – at which he was now getting quite adept – Branscombe turned to the mistress of the Hall.

  ‘Can I leave Ted with you, Miss Maude? Got to get on with my carrots and turnips, and all that. His playpen’s in the library, and I lit the fire.’ As Maude looked at him, shocked at this, he nodded in agreement. ‘I know, I know, shocking stuff. But I found an old door at the back of the shed that leads to Fallow Field, you know the one? And I chopped it up. A bit of cheer before New Year.’ He stopped. ‘A bit of cheer before New Year? I am a poet, though I didn’t know it . . .’

  Maude smiled, and followed him into the library. Dear thing, he always thought he was being so subtle, but really he was about as subtle as a dog with his head under the table that had forgotten that his tail was sticking out!

  Branscombe went down to the kitchen and started to cook, and as he did so he listened to the wireless. His old wireless from the old days, from Twistleton Court. Somehow that wireless meant the world to him, taking him back to the days before the war.

  He missed Miss Jessica and Miss Blossom, every day. They were always at the back of his mind, but just now he really had to get to grips with pushing carrots through the mincer, a job and a half at the best of times.

  Chapter Twelve

  All Johnny could hear were the voices above him, and sounds as if water was running, and all he could see was an arm sticking out. He stared at the arm. It looked familiar, but since he could hardly see for the dust and the dirt clogging his eyes, he could not be
sure. He tried to remember what had happened. His mother pushing him under the stairs, was it? Everything so quick, so sudden. Him playing, and then suddenly, before he could do much more than snatch up his toy, a feeling that the whole world was falling on top of him, and his mother was screaming and pushing him under what was now on top of him. He tried to stand up, but his head hit something. The kitchen table, that was what he had been pushed under, by his mum, or was it his nan?

  ‘Anyone in there?’ a voice called out, a little more clearly. ‘Anyone in there?’

  Johnny tried to call back, but his mouth was so full of dust he could hardly make a sound. Eventually he managed ‘Help!’, and then ‘Help!’ again, and although he was lying down, he knew he had made a sound that had been heard by someone, because a voice said, ‘I think I heard a voice, I think I heard something.’

  ‘Help! Help!’ Johnny called again. ‘I’m here! Johnny Lindsay! It’s me!’

  After saying that, he lay back against the rubble, exhausted, while above him – or was it around him? – he could hear the sound of bricks being moved and voices coming nearer.

  ‘It’s me!’ he called again, eventually. He wondered in a dazed way why he kept calling ‘It’s me!’ Until he remembered Mr Branscombe reading to him at night from that funny book, and the bit about Kanga and Roo, when Roo was covered in dust, and Kanga pretended not to know who he was, and how Roo had kept saying, ‘It’s me, Kanga!’ Or something like that. That was what he was like now, that was what Johnny was like now: he was like Roo, he was covered in dust, and his mum would never know him. He lay still, toy in hand. Someone would get him out and wash off the dirt, just like in the story. He believed that, he really did.

  Aurelia stared into Clive’s eyes.

  ‘I have to go, Clive, you know I have to go. Christmas is over, the war is not.’

  ‘But you’re probably doing something frightfully dangerous, and I won’t see you again, just when we have fallen in love, and everything about us is golden.’

  Aurelia reached up and touched Clive on the cheek.

  ‘Love,’ she said, a little hopelessly.

  ‘Is what it’s all about!’

  ‘No, just at this moment it’s war that it is all about, and we must win. We must defeat the Nazi devils, put them to the sword.’

  ‘But, but, you might be pregnant!’

  It was his last shot at delaying Aurelia, but he could see from her stubborn expression that it was futile. Aurelia shook her head.

  ‘No, Clive, I am not pregnant.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because, my dearest, dearest Clive, I am!’

  Aurelia remembered the dreadful time when she had thought she was, and felt ashamed. It had been foolish of her – but also terrible. What a thing to happen! And then for all your friends to know, and make preparations in case you were. It didn’t seem possible now that she could either have been so naive, or so open about herself in that way.

  She paused, looking back with something approaching repulsion at the person she had once been. An hysteric, at the beck and call of her beautiful mother, darling old Hotty, and her father. Always on the verge of tears, always embarrassing everyone, especially girls like Daisy and Freddie who had backbone. Well, now she had backbone too, and she was going to show it. She would be dropped into France as many times as it took. She was determined on it.

  She would take messages, and she would come back with messages, and during all that time she would look and look for Laura, until she found her. She would not leave her friend on the other side of the English Channel, she would bring her back. Whatever happened she would find her, or find out about her. She had to.

  ‘Clive, I know now that I am in love with you,’ she said, with her usual straightforward candour.

  ‘And I with you, but then I have been in love with you ever since I first saw you.’

  Aurelia was dressing with her back to Clive, but at this she turned to look at him, astonished.

  ‘I never knew that,’ she said, looking around for one of her stockings. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘It is true. Ask Guy!’

  ‘Guy knew that you were in love with me?’

  Clive nodded.

  ‘Of course. We have been friends since time began.’

  ‘Oh, I see. So he knew, and that is why he asked me down, is it?’

  ‘Good gracious, no. He asked you down because he trusts you and he likes you. He is not someone who will ever ask anyone anywhere if he does not trust or like them. The only trouble now is that since he was thrown into jug, since the press turned on him, along with everyone else, except people in the theatre – and some of them, too – he trusts and likes so few people that, as he says, he would be hard put to fill the broom-cupboard at Longbridge with his friends, let alone the drawing room!’

  Clive laughed shortly, and then swung his legs down to the floor. He had been hoping to make love to Aurelia once again, but he could see now that this was not going to happen. He could see, not just because she was dressing, but from the way she was dressing, that Aurelia’s thoughts were with the war, that love had been put away on a top shelf. Her expression was very set – not grim, but set – and she slipped her slim feet into her shoes, and pulled on her suit jacket, in such a determined fashion that she might already have been on her way, not just going to her suitcase to pack.

  ‘You can’t tell me what you are doing, but you can promise me to keep away from all those sexy Free Frenchmen at Baker Street, and those passionate Poles and cheeky Czechs, can’t you?’

  Aurelia turned and smiled, the expression in her eyes one of amusement. Just how many Free French and passionate Poles she would be seeing in Normandy or Brittany was open to question, but nevertheless, given that she would probably only meet Communists – those who made up the now very active underground – Nazi soldiers, and Normandy farmers, it was easy enough to promise that she would keep away from the men that Clive imagined were a danger to him.

  ‘I promise that whatever happens I will be faithful to you,’ she said, putting up a hand to touch his cheek.

  Clive took it and kissed it passionately, but even as he did, he knew in his heart of hearts that there was something that Aurelia was not telling him. Something that said that she was not just returning to SOE in Baker Street.

  Daisy had returned to ops with a heavy heart, for the truth was that being back at the Hall had weakened her dreadfully, in that way that people being kind to you so often did. If she did not know just how desperately people like her were needed, if she did not hate Hitler so much, she might have been inclined to throw in the towel, and take Jean’s place on the farm.

  Laura, on the other hand, had not returned from France for a very good reason. She was having an affair, and not only was she having an affair – her second, she realised just a little ruefully – but she was having an affair with a Communist, for goodness’ sake, although, really, goodness had very little to do with it.

  The fact was that the lines being run by the British through France would not have been possible if it had not been for the Communists. Without their single-minded hatred of the Nazi invader, without their grudge against the bourgeois middle classes, most of whom had thrown in their lot, all too willingly, with the Nazis – running agents would have been quite impossible.

  The next, and undeniable, fact was that the Communists were as brave as anything. They were just what you wanted, the kind of fighters that most generals would give not just their eye teeth for, but most of their stripes. They were the sanspareils of the underground movement. They gleefully blew up bridges even as the Boche crossed them, and set booby traps with hair’s-breadth timing for motorcades. They were also adept at running messages through the lines so carefully laid by people like Laura. Ice-cold in their daring, intent on thinking that in winning this battle, they were not just winning France back, they were winning back a new France.

  Laura had been picked up by John François – alw
ays known as Friquet, for reasons she had never bothered to ask him – hardly a moment after Aurelia had left her in the restaurant.

  Of course Laura had been told to expect someone, but not someone like Friquet! Tall, handsome, insouciant, with a look in his eyes which told everyone that not only did he like women, but he knew that women liked him.

  He was posing as a newspaper reporter working for a pro-Vichy rag, our man on the spot, as it were, which he seemed to find hilarious. Laura had been told that this was the type who would be her contact, but not exactly what he would be like. Even as he sat down on the bar stool so recently vacated by Aurelia, Laura knew that whatever happened now, whatever battle was ahead, being instantly attracted to Friquet was one fight she would willingly lose.

  As it turned out, after they had made love several times, Laura found out that Friquet was not just a Communist, but an aristocrat, too. He came of an ancient French line, steeped in history, and his ancestors had somehow escaped the guillotine thanks to being rescued by English cousins.

  ‘Although it is always possible that, as the last of the line, I may not have the same happy fate!’ he joked. ‘My family went to England, where they lived until it was safe to return, by which time our chateau was a little the worse for wear, but we managed to restore it, over the next hundred and fifty years – these things take time in France, as you know – and thereafter we have lived in it, deep in the heart of Normandy, unlike some, eschewing Paris, which was very sensible of us. But now, alas, the chateau is shut up once more, a desolate house, deserted by everyone except the mice. So, I the Communist son must once again fight for what is right, and, indeed, what is mine, or should be mine.’ He shook his head, and as he did so, and turned to light a cigarette, Laura realised that his profile, with its head of dark curly hair, was reminiscent of the Michelangelo sculpture of David. And not just his profile either, like the statue of David there was no doubt that Friquet was very well made in every way.