A Better World than This (47 page)

‘I must say you’re not a bit like I expected you to be,’ she said.

‘Oh. Am I not?
Aren’t I?
’ Daisy’s mind was racing ahead. If this were a film she would be in total command of the situation, smoking a cigarette like Sam’s wife, flicking the ash at the cream tiles of the new fireplace, cool as a cucumber, finding out how much this woman knew, telling her in a husky voice that the first thing they must do was to be
civilized
about the whole thing.

‘No, you’re not.’ Aileen had come prepared to be pitying; now she felt anger building up inside her. Sam had lied to her. Lied by inference, but lied all the same. Daisy Bell was lovely. Even smelling of fish, and without make-up, there was a freshness about her, an
innocence
that was in no way a naïvety. Put her in a white bonnet with the strings blowing in the wind and she was the Ovaltine Girl from the advertisement. Beside her Aileen felt over made-up, overdressed and, let’s face it, bloody middle-aged.

‘I’ll go upstairs and get Jimmy’s things.’ Daisy was so agitated she hardly knew what she was saying or doing. ‘How is he? I miss him a lot.’ Oh, God, should she have said that? Oh, why hadn’t Sam put her in the picture more so she would know what to talk about, how much to give away?

‘When I thought I was going to Canada,’ Aileen was saying in that plum-in-the-mouth accent so like Sam’s, ‘it seemed the best thing for him to stay in this country. Schooling and everything, you know. We can’t thank you enough for fostering him for us at a difficult time.’ She was staring straight at Daisy, stubbing out the cigarette, taking another from the packet with a black cat on the front.

‘That’s all right.’ If Daisy didn’t escape from the room her
expression
would give the game away.
Fostering
Jimmy? When this pretty woman with the young-old face
thought
she was going to Canada? She ran upstairs so quickly she almost tripped and fell, and once in her room took the brown paper parcel with Jimmy’s things in it from the top of her wardrobe to stand holding it to her, feeling her heart beating wildly. She would never forgive Sam for this. She put a hand over her mouth. If indeed he
knew
that his wife was here. The case Aileen had with her was empty – Daisy had kicked it aside accidentally as she left the room. So she really had come for Jimmy’s things. Perhaps that was all?
Could
that be all?

All at once an upsurge of fury caught her unawares. What did she think she was? A cringing door-mat? Was she going to let Aileen Barnet go away without knowing whether Sam had sent her or not? Was she going to wait for the next noncommittal letter, telling her nothing, promising a visit which would or would not materialize? She had always liked things clear, always wanted an honest and straightforward explanation for everything. Why had Sam sent his wife instead of coming himself? Did Sam even
know
that his wife was here? Well, there was only one way to find that out. Still clutching the parcel to her chest, she ran down the stairs.

‘Are you going back to London straight away, Mrs Barnet?’ Surely that was a harmless enough question.

‘Oh, no. I haven’t come from London. We’re based in your home town all week. Sam left me there for a few days while he drives his boss and the mill bloke up to Scotland. The children are being looked after by a friend with two of her own, roughly the same age and at the same school, so it isn’t much of a problem for her. She knows I’ll do the same for her any time.’

It was hard to take in. And yet at the same time it was only the confirmation of what Daisy had vaguely suspected for a long time now. Aileen Barnet wasn’t going to marry again and go to live in Canada. Somewhere along the line that affair had petered out. She and Sam were living together again. There wasn’t going to be a divorce. Maybe there was
never
going to be a divorce. Sam would never write and tell her he had found a better job, never come up and insist she sell the boarding-house, or hand it over to Florence. How could he when Florence was dead? How could any of that happen when he had been lying to her all the time,
using
her, persuading her to go into his room in her nightie and climb into bed with him.

It was no good, she couldn’t cope with it. Her thoughts spun out of control as the guilt flooded through her. How could she stay here in the same room as Sam’s wife when she had got into bed with her husband in the middle of the night and almost let him have his way with her? She could have cried aloud with the shame of it all. She had no idea how her face mirrored her thoughts. Unaware that Sam’s wife was reading her like an open book.

‘You’re not the first one, you know.’ Aileen drew deeply on her cigarette. ‘Not by a long chalk, oh dear me, no.’ She cocked her neat little head to one side. ‘Different though. Not Sam’s usual type. He likes his women a bit younger usually. Younger and harder, not still damp behind the ears.’

‘There was nothing. …’ Daisy had the overwhelming guilt still on her. It was choking her, forcing her to explain, not to let herself be seen as a … what was it Jimmy had said? … a fancy-piece. ‘We never. …’ Her voice trailed away in distress.

‘Really? That’s not like Sam.’ Aileen’s arched and plucked eyebrows ascended almost to her fluffy hairline. ‘Are you thinking you love him, Miss Bell? Did he promise to marry you when our divorce came through? Yes, I see he did.’ She tut-tutted as if she found the whole thing mildly irritating. ‘Two years ago one of his little paramours actually turned up on the doorstep with her case packed, ready to move in with him. She didn’t bargain on seeing his wife open the door. Please do something with that cat. It’s making me sneeze.’

It was Aileen’s apparent lack of concern that did it. If she had cried or looked miserable Daisy would have held her tongue, but to see her sitting there puffing on her third
cigarette
, missing the ashtray more often than not … well, as Daisy’s own mother would have said, it was more than flesh and blood could stand.

‘Yes, Mrs Barnet, I
was
thinking I loved your husband. Notice I said
was
thinking, Mrs Barnet. I haven’t had much experience in loving a man, but to my mind love is a bit like a plant – if it’s not watered and fed it wilts and dies.’ She lifted her chin and raised her voice. ‘I’ve been that carried away I haven’t known what I’ve been doing. Making excuses for him,
understanding
him, making a door-mat of meself just for the sake of a smile from him.’ She put up a hand. ‘No, don’t speak yet. Let me finish. You’ve nothing to worry about. You’re getting him back as good as new. Because you
are
having him back, aren’t you?’ She dashed a hand across her eyes. ‘I can understand you having a bit of a fling yourself after what you’ve told me, but what about Jimmy? How could you do what you did? You didn’t know where he was going, you had no idea what I was like. Suppose I’d been cruel to him? Would you have even cared?’ Tears were pricking behind her eyes. ‘Because
I
cared about him, Mrs Barnet. Would you like a proper laugh? I’d even gone as far as imagining that Sam and me might adopt him legally when we were married. Jimmy was
ill
while he was here, proper ill. He might have died. An’ he needed you. He kept calling for you when the fever was on him. I can understand you playing the old tit-for-tat with Sam, but I’ll never see how you could let your child go to a stranger like that.’

‘You’re a bit of a hypocrite, aren’t you, Miss Bell?’ Aileen ground out her cigarette. ‘Telling me one minute how carried away you were yourself. You don’t think you’re the only woman to make a fool of herself over a man who wasn’t worth it, do you?’ She started to take another cigarette from the packet, then pushed it back into her handbag. ‘I would have laid down and died for David.’

‘David?’

‘The bloke I was supposed to be going to Canada with. I loved him so much it was as though another person lived in
my
skin. Jimmy was awful to him, and Jimmy can be hard work when he sets himself to be awkward. He got on my nerves so much I was making myself ill. David couldn’t stand him, and to say that Jimmy couldn’t stand David would be the understatement of the year.’ She spread her hands wide. ‘So I took him to his father, they’d always been as thick as thieves anyway, and the next I knew Sam had fostered him out with friends. Two maiden ladies with a lodging-house by the sea, he told me, just for the time being till he finished with his exams and could move out of that grotty room over Mr Evison’s garage.’ She took off her hat and placed it on the settee cushions beside her. ‘Sam was biding his time, that’s all. He suspected that David had no intention of marrying me and starting off with a ready-made family in Canada. It takes one to know one, Miss Bell.’

Daisy said nothing. She was staring at the wide black parting revealed when Aileen Barnet lowered her head. Like a dirty stripe at least an inch wide. It made Sam’s wife more human somehow, vulnerable. More of an ally. More like a
friend
.

‘Seems we’ve both been a couple of pie-cans,’ she said at last.

‘Pie-cans?’ Aileen raised a bleak face.

‘Lancashire for silly buggers,’ Daisy said deliberately, wanting to shock a smile out of the unhappy woman now lighting yet another cigarette. ‘Stay where you are and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’

‘So that’s that,’ Daisy told Joshua later that evening after Winnie had gone to bed. She had spared him what she thought of as the sordid details, telling him that Sam wouldn’t be coming up again, that his wife wasn’t going to divorce him, and that when he found a better job, as she was sure he would, Sam and his wife were going to try and make a go of it.

She was very matter-of-fact as she spoke. Brisk, no nonsense, almost as if it had been a foregone conclusion. ‘You know, I could have
liked
her, Joshua. Her hair needed
touching
up, but apart from that she was really quite pretty.’

‘So now what are you going to do?’ There was a singing in Joshua’s head, but he wasn’t going to listen to it, not yet. In spite of Daisy’s flippancy he had known something was wrong the minute he came into the house, and known equally she would tell him about it at the first opportunity. He was her best friend now that Florence was dead; probably she had thought of him as that for a long time
before
Florence did what she did. He was Daisy’s confidant, her sounding board. Good old Joshua, always there, forever reliable, a friend in need and a friend indeed. What more could he ask?

Suddenly he knew there was a lot more he could ask. His instinct should have warned him it was too soon, the wrong moment, but he was impetuous, eager, a man in love, and he had bided his time for too long.

‘I could give up,’ Daisy was saying, ‘or I could carry on. I could tell myself that losing Sam, Florence dying – I could tell myself it was all too much for me to bear.’ She tucked the wayward strand of hair behind an ear. ‘Or I could put up a fight. I could remind myself that we are like animals, you know, the law of the jungle, kill or be killed. I could, for the time being, till the hurt goes away a little, live one day at a time, not looking to the future too much. The way I think you do, Joshua.’ Her smile almost broke his heart. ‘At least I’ve got your friendship to keep me going. You should be called Peter, really. You know, Peter, the rock.’

The long day had drained the strength from her, but with only that red-haired flighty child to help her he knew she would get up the next morning and carry on. Beds would be made, meals prepared with care, families would come and go, determined to enjoy themselves whether it rained, blew a gale or even snowed. From the lounge a loud burst of laughter reminded Joshua that they were far from alone.

‘You could always marry me,’ he said, timing it wrong, saying it clumsily, smiling when he should have looked serious. In his eagerness there was even the hint of a swagger in his voice.

‘Yes, there’s always that possibility.’ Daisy laughed into
his
eyes. ‘I might consider it too if it wouldn’t be too much like marrying me dad. Did I ever tell you how much you remind me of my father, Joshua? I think that’s why I’m so fond of you.’

Joshua stepped back swiftly as if she’d hit out at him. ‘Yes, boys have become fathers at fifteen,’ he said stiffly, ‘so I suppose that in a literal context I could be your father.’ He raised a non-existent hat from his head in a mock salute. ‘Goodnight, Daisy. Tomorrow is another day.’

The hurt was deep inside him as he slowly climbed the stairs to his room at the top of the tall house. It festered inside him as he pulled on his dressing-gown and sat in his chair listening to Chopin’s
First Prelude
on his wireless with the sound turned low. He smoked his pipe till the air felt and smelled thick, but the music that night was of little comfort to his soul.

He woke to the sound of footsteps on the stairs and a frenzied knocking on a door. Out on the landing he bumped into Daisy struggling into a cotton kimono-type dressing-gown. She clutched at Joshua.

‘It’s the man in number four. He says he left the plug in his wash basin and the tap running.’ She was already half-way down the stairs. ‘Oh, no! Look at it!
Do
something, Joshua! Oh, my new carpets … they’ll be ruined.’

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Miss Bell.’ The commercial traveller in number four slip-slapped his way towards them through the water soaking its way through the pile of the new landing carpet. ‘I was so fast asleep, I didn’t hear a sound.’

‘The overflow must have been blocked.’ His face grim, Joshua paddled out of the bedroom. ‘Where’s the fuse box?’ He patted Daisy’s arm as he sloshed his way to the top of the stairs. ‘Don’t panic now. Just leave it to me. We’ll need candles and torches. I’ll have to turn the electricity off at the master switch.’

‘Candles and torches. … All right, Joshua.’

He could sense Daisy being determined to keep calm, but all the lights went out as they reached the hall together. ‘What the ’ell’s going on?’ By the sound of things, Joshua realized, at least two of the men visitors had emerged from their rooms, ready and willing to help – he hoped. ‘Good girl.’ He took a torch from Daisy’s outstretched hand and moved into the lounge.