The Daisy Club

by Charlotte Bingham

  The Red Cross helper nodded, and then turned away. Yet another lost child, yet another evacuee to be placed.

  She consulted her superior as to what to do.

  ‘He’ll have to be sent to another centre, we’re full up here. And then, well – once they’ve identified the other bodies, he’ll have to go to an orphanage, if all his family were in there.’

  The Red Cross helper looked sadly across at the poor little chap lying between two chairs clutching his toy train. What a thing for a little boy. Bad enough to have lost both his parents, maybe all his family. Who knew if his brothers and the big house were not some sort of made-up story? But for the poor mite to end up in an orphanage would be terrible.

  Freddie had not had a day off from anything since she had last seen Daisy, at least she didn’t think she had. Not that she should have a day off, nor even a night off, nor even an afternoon off, why should she? No one else had ‘days off’, it was just that she liked to think that one day she would have time to take a walk, or go to the cinema – something that would let her off having to think any more, and also relieve her of the pressure of running away from what she thought everyone else was thinking.

  It was the third year of the proper war, and everything was getting harder and harder. However much they all joked about being hungry, being hungry hurt. Sometimes Freddie, after a long, long day, would clutch her stomach and bang it with her fists because she felt as if she had an animal inside her, and it was eating her, and of course she did have an animal in there, and the name of that animal was hunger. And the worst of it was that they all knew they were very lucky, because they were in the country, and they could grow food, but it was trying to grow enough to spare that was so hard, and battling with the elements to get what they grew to the right places, and to the right people.

  Each day now seemed more difficult than the last. It was not just trying to find enough food for Branscombe and herself to put in front of the rest of the household, but also having to feed the animals, help muck out, wash up, clean out, wring out, and any other things that happened to be needed. Hot water had never been in great abundance at the Hall, as she had discovered when she first arrived, but now it was even scarcer – what with the fuel shortage, the need to save electricity, and the need to do everything they could to save, and save, and save. It made everything so difficult, so tiring.

  ‘You need an afternoon off, Miss Freddie,’ Branscombe told her. ‘Really, you do. You need to go to the cinema, or do something that will take your mind off the war. I’ll look after young Ted here. You take yourself off, you look worn to a thread paper.’

  Freddie frowned. Branscombe was obviously a mind-reader.

  ‘I don’t really think that I should, really I don’t. Besides, the petrol, you know.’

  ‘Tart yourself up, go on. Take yourself off. Put on your nurse’s uniform, and hitch a lift, you’ll be quite safe. Go and see something at the cinema at Wychford. Someone will take you.’

  Freddie shook her head. Someone might give her a lift, someone might take her for a cup of tea, but to what purpose? She knew no one her own age. The army, grimly going about their training in the village, the land girls, who had their own club, their own language, Dan and Miss Beresford, little Ted, the Lindsay boys, there was no close friend with whom she could talk. She missed the Daisy Club, she missed having a gin with one or the other of them, or just a laugh. She missed friendship.

  ‘What about tea?’ she said in a dulled voice to Branscombe. ‘I really should stay and help with tea.’

  ‘Tea is as tea does. Off with you. I’ll take care of everything.’

  Freddie suddenly saw the sense in this. She dried her hands on a tea towel. She was back on nights at the hospital, going back to the Hall during the day to do what she could. She hadn’t seen Daisy, didn’t know where Aurelia and Laura might be, and hardly knew what a pair of stockings looked like, so scarce had they become. Some of the nurses at the hospital were now painting seams up their legs to make it look as if they were wearing them. Others had made friends with American soldiers stationed in the next town, although making ‘friends’ was perhaps a bit of a euphemistic way of putting it. Freddie was not up to making ‘friends’ with anyone, not even for a pair of nylons.

  She opened her underwear drawer, and that was also a misnomer. She had managed to make new underwear for herself, out of some parachute silk, and very pretty it looked, but she turned away. She couldn’t wear it, even on an afternoon off. She had to save it. She might need it one day, more than she did today.

  Nowadays everyone hitched a lift, and no one thought anything of it. She straightened herself up, refreshed by just the thought of not having to do anything for the rest of the day, until she clocked into the hospital for night duty. She was just about to swing out through the hall doors, thinking that to see someone new, drink a beer, hear laughter in a pub, would do her no end of good, when she saw a car pushing itself slowly, very slowly up the drive.

  ‘Who now?’

  She spoke the words out aloud, and although they were innocent enough, the way Freddie said them they could have been swear words.

  A young man climbed out of the much battered car, alone. Freddie frowned. Most unusual for anyone in this day and age to arrive alone. He stood staring around him. He was in civvies, and wore black leather gloves.

  ‘Corporal Bastable!’ Freddie saw at once who it was, and she went out to greet him, knowing as she did that this would mean an end to her beloved afternoon off. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m driving for a few of our boys. They were wanted over at Bramsfield. I had an hour to spare, so came on,’ he told her. ‘Had to come back here to see, you know.’ He stopped. ‘Not much of the village left, now, after all. The army have certainly done a good job. But, had to see—’ He stopped again, looking embarrassed.

  ‘You came to see if we were all still here? Well, we are. A few of us. Come in and have a cup of tea?’ she said, not really wanting him to do any such thing, because it would mean her outing to the cinema would go bang.

  Benjamin Bastable seemed to understand this. He smiled.

  ‘No, I won’t impose on you, Miss Freddie. I just wanted to see you, see if you were all still all right, and you are.’

  ‘And you? You married?’

  He coloured slightly, and shook his head.

  ‘No, I’m afraid nothing came of it, you know. She met someone else. I think she was put off by the war.’ They both knew that he really meant by the loss of his hand. ‘Still, I got left with the dog!’ he joked, suddenly.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry.’ Freddie said this a little automatically, because she had suddenly found that she was not sorry at all.

  ‘I mustn’t keep you, Miss Freddie, I’ll be on my way. The boys, you know, they’ll be back from their doings before you can say knife – well, we hope so, anyway.’ He noticed her coat. ‘But you were going out when I arrived?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I was just going for a walk – well, on an outing,’ Freddie lied, because she didn’t want to embarrass him by asking for a lift.

  ‘Can I give you a lift to Bramsfield, or some such?’

  It was Freddie’s turn to colour.

  ‘Well, if it’s not an imposition?’

  ‘Not at all. Do anything for you and Miss Beresford, you know that, Miss Freddie.’

  ‘Freddie, please—’

  ‘Ben.’

  They shook hands as if they had never met before, and Freddie realised that Ben’s black leather gloves were a way of disguising his false hand, because he shook her right hand with his left one.

  Once in the car, they never stopped talking, and perhaps because Freddie was the same age as Ben, and the war had changed them all so much, it seemed to her to be perfectly wonderful to be talking and laughing with a boy her own age.

  ‘And where can I drop you?’

  ‘At the cinema. I am having an afternoon off, before going back to the hospital. Pretty indulgent, I’m
afraid, but there we are. Branscombe gave me a pink ticket.’

  Benjamin nodded, understanding.

  ‘If you want to find us, we’re all meeting later for a beer at The Cock and Pheasant, at about six.’

  Freddie paused. A beer with boys her own age! No patients, no one needing to be bandaged, or fed, or given an anaesthetic – if you could find any.

  ‘It sounds like heaven, I’ll see you there.’

  She walked into the cinema, feeling that she had agreed to something pretty daring, but caring less than a farthing that she had.

  While Freddie was out, a letter came for Maude in a very small, flimsy square white envelope. She stared at it. She did not know the handwriting, and as she opened it she suspected that it might be something untoward, which it was.

  Madam,

  I am a neighbour of Mr and Mrs Lindsay, whose boys I think are with you. Madam, I am sorry to tell you that those good people are no more. Their house and mine had a direct hit, but I was away in Penge with my sick mother, and so did not get killed, but they were not so fortunate. I promised their mother if anything happened I would let you know on account of them being, as I understand it, with you, and so that is what I am so doing, madam. I am so sorry for the boys. Myself, am childless and a spinster, so much better had it have been me. No more ink, the last!

  Yours truly and obliged, Enid Broadstairs

  Maude found her way downstairs with some difficulty, because Branscombe was so mad keen to save electricity at any cost. He only worked by one light in the kitchen, and there were no overhead bulbs on the landings. She really should have taken her torch, but the news was so grave she clung to the stair rail instead, and eventually, and gratefully, arrived in the kitchen.

  ‘Branscombe?’

  Branscombe turned as Maude stumbled into the room, waving a small piece of lined paper obviously torn from a school exercise book.

  ‘This letter, it’s from someone in the Lindsay family’s street. They’ve been bombed out, the street has all gone. Bombed out. The family have all been bombed out. She thinks no one was left.’

  Maude sank down into the old kitchen chair and put her head back, closing her eyes. She had become so close to Alec, and his brothers, to Tom and Dick, but Alec particularly. He was growing into such a fine young man, and now this had happened. It would devastate them.

  Branscombe took the letter from Maude.

  ‘Is little Johnny gone?’ he asked, and it seemed to him as he did that he could hear his own voice, and it was strangely steady, strangely matter-of-fact, as if he had been waiting to be told, all these months, that Johnny would not be coming back to them.

  Maude opened her eyes.

  ‘I am afraid that we must think that he is, Branscombe,’ she said, and Maude’s own voice seemed to her to be matter-of-fact, because she was so shocked.

  And yet why should she be so shocked, for heaven’s sake? Sending a little chap like that back to his mother to live in one of the most dangerous parts of England, what did they expect? What did they expect?

  ‘I’d better go up and tell the boys. They’ll be in the milking-sheds, poor lads.’ Branscombe turned away. His gravy was about to burn. Gravy! No one could call that gravy, it was more like dish-water. He threw it with sudden force into the sink, where it drained slowly away.

  ‘Alec, Tom – where’s Dick?’ He called them, and they came up to him, knowing at once from his sad walrus face with its black eyepatch that something was terribly wrong. ‘I am sorry to tell you, but your house, your home, has had a direct hit. They don’t think that anyone has survived.’

  Alec stood quite still, staring at him, and then he turned slowly away, and went back to his milking, Tom rushed off howling, and Dick sank against the wall, his face working with the struggle not to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you, boys.’

  Alec turned round, briefly.

  ‘I’m not, Mr Branscombe.’

  Branscombe turned away.

  ‘Must get back to making tea. Make sure that Tom gets in, won’t you, Alec? There’s a good lad. He’ll need something. It’s a long day for all of you.’

  ‘And for you, too, Mr Branscombe.’ Alec turned once more, nodding. ‘I’ll be in to help you soon as I’ve got through Mrs Rommel, here. Can’t leave her to anyone else. Kicks like a mule, as Miss Jean used to say.’

  Branscombe nodded, and he went back to his kitchen. He sometimes wondered at how anything, or anyone, went on. Two wars, and they weren’t even finished with this one. Two wars, and all those dead, and for what? For nothing that he could see. Oh, he could see that they had to get on with it now that they were in it, but how had they arrived in it in the first place? He shook his head. The devil, and only the devil, really knew.

  Freddie could not wait for six o’clock to arrive. The film was terrible, but possibly it seemed all the more so because she was so looking forward to going to The Cock and Pheasant?

  She had packed her precious pieces of loo paper in her handbag, and so was able to arrive early at the pub, and ‘pop to the aunt’, where she put on some lipstick, and combed her hair.

  She stared at herself. She had grown so thin that Sister kept joking that if Freddie stood sideways they would never be able to find her.

  She pinched her cheeks, and put her long plait into a twist at the back. Despite the shortage of shampoo, and having to melt down soap – if you could get it – she could not bring herself to cut off her hair, particularly since Jessica and Blossom had gone. Aunt Jessie had always been so proud of Freddie’s long hair, ever since she was small. She had promised Jessica never to cut it, and she never would.

  She climbed slowly up the stairs, hoping that no one would come rushing up to her and ask her what to do about their boils or their VD, or their asthma, or anything else that happened to be wrong with them, because one glance at her uniform, and a queue could form. Happily, Benjamin Bastable was waiting for her in the bar with a particularly eager expression.

  ‘Beer?’

  ‘Lovely, thank you. Can I?’

  She opened her purse to help out with the round.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ Ben said, looking shocked. ‘You’re my date, not my war chest!’

  Freddie smiled, and they started talking, only to be interrupted a few minutes later by the rest of what Ben called ‘our gang’.

  ‘Of course you know he lost his hand helping us out, so that’s why we have to let him drive us?’

  Freddie smiled, knowing better, but also knowing that driving with one hand could not be easy. But then, flying a plane with no legs wasn’t, either, and they’d all been told about a certain pilot who did that.

  ‘There’s dancing in the upstairs room. Want to come and jitterbug?’

  ‘Don’t know how to,’ she had to admit.

  ‘It’s easy. I’ll show you, as long as you don’t mind catching my left hand. I can spin you, and you can follow my feet, just do the same as I do.’

  Freddie looked down at her nurse’s uniform. Would it matter?

  ‘I was going to hitch a lift, and then go on to the hospital, that’s why I’m like this,’ she confessed, feeling suddenly awkward, as they were passed by girls who were really got up to the nines, if not the tens.

  ‘You look cute,’ Ben told her. ‘No one to hold a candle to you. Come on.’ He held out his left hand and pulled her after him. ‘You don’t know what fun is until you’ve jitterbugged.’

  Branscombe nodded at Alec. He had given him a top-to-toe inspection, and fully approved of what he could see. It had not been easy to kit Alec out from the few clothes that they had, but kit him out they had. The only hitch had been finding shoes. Alec had, quite rightly, refused to wear a pair of dancing pumps that Miss Freddie had found in the attic, instead they had all agreed that the riding boots were the only solution.

  Alec cycled to the station, one thing, and one thing alone, on his mind. He had to find out what had happened. Very well, the house had taken
a direct hit, but he had to see for himself. He could not possibly bring the others, as it would leave the farm too short-handed, but Miss Maude and Mr Branscombe understood, he had to go back to London to see everything for himself.

  The train, when it arrived, was so crowded that it was not just a question of standing, it was a question of fitting in at all. Mr Budgeon gave Alec’s backside one last great shove, and thanks to him, and his skill at shutting the door, Alec found himself aboard, and on his way back to London.

  He also found himself face to face, only inches away, from a dozen unfamiliar faces, who all stared at him.

  ‘We were just discussing the movies we have seen,’ a Canadian soldier said. They were standing so close to each other, that, as the soldier joked, a little later, ‘Any closer and we’d have to marry.’

  At that particular moment, though, the soldier smiled encouragingly, but to no avail. Alec had to admit that he had never seen a film, nor even been to the cinema.

  ‘I live in the country,’ he said, by way of explanation, and as he spoke he could see that his fellow passengers were staring at him, so closely that it was not difficult to see they were thinking he was like someone from Mars, if he had never seen a film.

  ‘What’s that like, living in the country, then?’

  ‘You don’t sound like a countryman—’

  ‘No, I’m a cockney, but I live in the country now.’

  ‘Well, tell us about it, why don’t you?’ The Canadian nodded encouragingly, once more, as the train slowly made its way towards the capital.

  So Alec told his fellow passengers what it was like to be in the country, and how hard it could be, but also how rewarding. He told them about getting up at first light, and going to bed as it faded, about the kind of animals you saw, and the birds. How you could, if you were lucky, see a kingfisher, which was of such a startling colour that it made you wonder how it could survive. He told them about the army taking over Twistleton, and how all the birds and the wildlife had somehow seemed to have taken refuge at the Hall, away from the armoured cars and the guns and the mortars. He told them how Miss Maude went to nurse at the hospital, because she had nursed during the Great War, and how Mr Branscombe made soups for them all out of everything and anything, and how they set about the hedgerows in autumn, plucking what they could, from hazelnuts to blackberries; and how he had learned to shoot rabbits, and skin them, too, and how he and his brothers milked the cows, and knew every one of them by name. He told them so much that by the time the train, very, very slowly, arrived in the middle of the night at the station, and they all had to take refuge in the Underground because the sirens were screaming, the Canadian soldier said in parting, ‘Thank you, young man. Now I know exactly what we are all fighting for. And good luck!’