Daisy's Secret (40 page)

‘Anyway, you don’t need me getting under your feet. You have a good day with your chums.’ And she’d packed him a substantial lunch box of home-made pies and home-cured ham butties.

The children returned from their expedition, faces black with juice. Daisy was up to her elbows in flour from making bread and pastry for the pies, her two small assistants helping or hindering, depending upon your perspective when the door flew open and Daisy finally came face to face with the kitchen’s owner.

‘Florrie!’

But it wasn’t her aunt who held her sole attention. Nor even Rita standing beside her, a look of malicious triumph on her face, as if to say: I’ve found you at last.

It was the sight of the child held in Florrie’s arms who captured her utterly, heart and soul.

Daisy walked over and gazed at the baby with open longing in her eyes. She took in the red-brown hair, the bright blue eyes and her heart turned slowly over inside, just as if she were on a big dipper. No matter how hard she tried to push it to the back of her mind, deep inside the hurt had never gone away. She wanted her baby back as badly as ever, so much that it was a physical pain clamped tight around her heart. ‘Who is this? Is he yours, Aunt Florrie?’

It was Rita who answered. ‘Nay lass. Don’t you recognise him? He’s your son. Yours and Percy’s. He’s come home to his mam at last.’

Daisy heard the fear in the children’s voices as she slid to the floor.

It seemed too good to be true. When Daisy came round after her faint, she half expected to find it had all been a dream but no, there he still was, sitting on Florrie’s knee, happily kicking his chubby little legs while her mother stood guard over the teapot and Megan and Trish knelt anxiously beside her, their little faces as white as the streaks of flour down their pinnies.

‘Are you all right, Daisy?’ Trish stroked away a tear from her cheek, then patted it kindly.

‘I thought you’d dropped dead too,’ said Megan, in a worryingly matter-of-fact tone.

Daisy quickly sat up and pushed her hair from her eyes. A rush of blood to her head made it spin dizzily but she smiled nonetheless. ‘I’m right as rain. Just had a bit of a turn, that’s all. Must be the heat of this kitchen after all our cooking.’

Rita made no move to assist her daughter as she struggled to her feet, merely remarked, ‘I reckoned you’d come round some time.’ Just as if Daisy had deliberately allowed herself to faint and deserved to be left lying on the cold kitchen floor.

Assisted by her two small friends, Daisy dragged out a chair and heaved herself into it. ‘What would I do without you two?’ she said, smiling and hugging them close, and even as she offered further reassurances that she was perfectly well, her eyes were glued to the baby. Was he truly her child? He was about the right age, coming up to two years old. Heavens, was it so long? It felt like only yesterday. He had Percy’s hair, brown with a hint of red if not quite so dark. Perhaps she’d got it all wrong, had indeed dreamed it in a way: wishing so hard that he could be hers that she’d misheard what her mother had actually said. She cleared her throat, feeling suddenly nervous.

‘He’s a fine baby, Florrie. You must be proud of him.’ Best to play safe and assume he belonged to her aunt. She seemed so vulnerable with her deeply sunken eyes, purple shadows beneath, stringy bleached blonde hair in need of a wash, and yet on her feet a pair of red sling-back shoes, boldly making a declaration of the woman she’d once been. Oh, how Daisy wished Clem was here, but he’d warned her to expect him to be late home from his meet.
 

Florrie looked up, a mixture of surprise and anxiety on her tired face as she flicked her gaze to Daisy and then quickly over to Rita.

Rita said, ‘I told you, lass. He isn’t our Florrie’s. He’s yours. Yours and Percy’s. Don’t you recognise him? He’s the spitting image of his dad.’

There seemed to be a roaring sound in her head. She couldn’t quite take it in. This was the second time Rita had announced this fact but Daisy was still finding it hard to believe the evidence of her own eyes and ears. Could it be true? Why would her mother lie? But wasn’t she the one who wanted rid of the child? Wasn’t he supposed to be a secret? Yet here he was, her own flesh and blood. Or was he?

‘Don’t you want to hold him?’ Rita asked, again with that odd little smirk on her face, thoroughly pleased with herself.

Daisy shook her head, panic washing over her. She daren’t go anywhere near him. If she picked up the baby she might never let him go. She had to be sure, absolutely certain in her heart of hearts that he was hers, before she ever took the risk.

A small hand gently shook her shoulder. Megan was again offering her a mug of strong, sweet tea and Daisy smiled her gratitude at the child and took a few sips. She began to feel stronger almost at once. Something was wrong. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but something wasn’t quite right about all of this. She needed to find out exactly what was going on. Daisy turned to the two little girls. ‘Why don’t you go and play out on the swing for a bit.’

‘What about our blackberry pie?’ Megan asked, her mouth in a sulk.

‘I’ll give you a shout when I’m ready to put it in the oven.’

Trish went over to the baby and stroked his silky brown hair. ‘Can he come and play too?’

‘Tomorrow perhaps. He’ll be tired just now, after all his travelling. Aunt Florrie will be putting him to bed for his nap soon, I expect.’

Florrie shot to her feet, as if a signal had been given for her to escape. ‘I’ll take him now. He’ll need changing anyway,’ and she flew up the stairs.

When the children too had gone and they were alone at last, Daisy turned to face her mother. ‘I don’t understand. You gave him up for adoption. Said he was to be forever a secret. What changed? Where has he been all this time, and how come he’s with you now?’

All questions Rita had been prepared for, along with several others. ‘Nay, lass, take a breath, will you. Give me a chance.’ She settled herself comfortably at the table, poured herself a fresh mug of tea which she sweetened generously with no regard to shortages, then launched into her carefully rehearsed tale.

Rita had realised, the moment she’d clapped eyes on the remains of her home that she was done for, that there was no way her daughter would take her in off the streets. Not willingly, not after the way she’d been treated. There was too much bad feeling between them. It was a sad fact, in Rita’s opinion, that today’s generation didn’t have the morals of her own. She’d done her best to bring Daisy up clean and decent, but the girl had let her down badly. So if she refused to be dragged down into the mire with her, where was the fault in that? But in the circumstances, it had left her in a pretty pickle.

It was finding the baby which had put the idea into her head that he could well be the key to Daisy’s heart.

She’d dismissed it at first, on the grounds that it was too risky. Daisy wasn’t stupid. But throughout the long weeks of trekking around vainly seeking accommodation, and with Florrie time again refusing to even consider returning to the Lake District, she’d begun to have second thoughts on the matter. She’d taken her time, letting the seed grow in her head, thinking it through from every angle till it blossomed into a fully-fledged plan. Rita felt sure that she’d now examined all possible difficulties. The delay in putting it into effect had been no bad thing, as it turned out. As well as overcoming one or two minor problems Florrie had been allowed sufficient time to grow fond of the child, even to giving him a name. Robbie. So when Rita had finally put forward her plan, she’d very cleverly been able to put the stopper on further objections without any difficulty whatsoever.

‘I don’t really think you are in any position to argue, do you?’

‘But you can’t possibly let Daisy think this child is her own, when we know for certain that he isn’t.’

‘But we don’t know that, do we? Not for certain.’ Rita had blithely remarked, thin lips curling into a humourless smile. ‘Since we’ve no idea who the lad is, he could very well be Daisy’s baby.’

‘It’s not very likely though, is it? That would be too much of a coincidence. And we found him nowhere near Marigold Court. He was in the shelter.’

‘Who’s to know where we found him, if we don’t tell? We need a roof over our heads before winter comes, and you can be absolutely certain that our Daisy won’t offer one unless we make her.’ Rita had given a careless shrug. ‘Course, it’s your house by rights, not our Daisy’s, so you could happen exercise some power over that husband of yours.’

Florrie had paled visibly at the suggestion. ‘Clem wouldn’t listen to me. Not now. He happen won’t have me in the house, let alone you. Not after walking out on him. Anyroad, I’ve told you already, Rita, I’m not going back.’

‘Oh, yes you are, girl. You’ll do exactly as I say or else you might find yourself up for baby-snatching. Then where would you be?’

‘Baby snatching?’ Florrie’s voice cracked with fear. ‘But I didn’t snatch him, I picked him up - to nurse him, to look after him because I thought his mam had been killed, or hurt or something.’

Triumph gleamed from Rita’s boot button eyes. ‘So why have you done nowt about handing him back? How will you explain keeping him all this while, eh? And you know what they’ll say, the polis. Didn’t you lose a baby of your own once, Mrs Pringle? Sent you a bit wrong in the head, has it? Happen you’d best go into an asylum then. It’d be for the best, don’t you think? Can’t have you going around pinching other folk’s babbies.’

Florrie had sobbed for days but, in the end, had complied with the plan, as Rita had known that she would. Simply because she had no choice. Nevertheless, it would be politic to keep a close watch on her, tighten the screws from time to time, just to make sure that she didn’t defect.

None of this was revealed to her daughter as Rita calmly explained how the child she’d given birth to had been taken, not by strangers as she’d supposed at the time, but by Percy’s own family. Rita had fabricated this tale as the only one Daisy would be likely to find credible; that Percy’s sister and brother-in-law had agreed to take the child, because loving children as much as they did, one more was neither here nor there. ‘And they’d wanted to help Percy. You remember Annie, lovely girl she was. The poor lass was taken, along with all her children, in the same blast what got your dad. It’s a miracle this little one escaped.’ Which of course meant there was no one to dispute her story, beyond the girl’s mother who was unlikely to hear of it, and Percy himself, of course. Not that he cared one way or the other. Like most young men, he was more interested in himself and had found no difficulty in accepting the yarn Rita had spun him too.

She was the only one who knew the truth, the only one ever likely to know.

Daisy’s whole body jerked as if she’d been struck, one fact alone standing out among all the jumble. ‘Dad? Dad’s been killed? For God’s sake why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m telling you now.’

She was on her feet, leaning over the table and banging upon it with her fist. ‘You let me sit here, drinking tea, and my dad’s dead? What kind of mother are you? Have you no heart?’

‘Close to him were you?’ Rita asked, a challenge in the glitter of her hard eyes, and Daisy sank back onto her seat with a sad sort of sigh. ‘Thought not. There’s a war on, if you haven’t noticed. Don’t suppose you have, living here in paradise. But while you live up on t’top o’ world, some of us down in the gutter have had it hard and lost everything. My home is nowt more than a heap of muck and rubble. Everything gone. Most of our neighbours in Marigold Court copped it.’ She stabbed a thumb against her own skinny chest. ‘And me and Florrie would have bought it too, if we hadn’t been having a barney with an ARP Warden at the time. With nowt but the clothes we stand up in, we’ve been like two gypsies all summer, striving to put a roof over us head. We’ve slept in schoolrooms and church halls, air raid shelters, bus shelters for heavens’ sake, at times.’
 

‘I don’t believe you,’ Daisy interrupted, unable to keep quiet any longer. ‘I know how you always love to dramatise.’

Rita leaned across the table and spat her bitter disappointment of life into her daughter’s face. ‘I’m telling you the truth. Would I lie about your dad? Useless lump that he was, and he left me nowt.’

‘No, not even a sore heart, because you have none.’

Rita sat back in her seat on a long-drawn-out sigh of resignation. ‘Well, that’s a nice way to talk to your mam, I must say. Florrie and me have filled in hundreds of flamin’ forms, sat for hours in council offices trying to persuade some po-faced official that we should be given priority for proper accommodation, what with the baby an’ all. We might as well have cried for the moon. In the end we gave up, and here we are. It’s still your aunt’s home remember, madam, so far as I’m aware.’

Daisy stared at her mother in horror. ‘I know it is, but don’t think you can stop here as well. It’s not on.’

‘Why isn’t it on? Florrie has led me to understand there’s plenty of room, any number of bedrooms in fact. I only need one. And it’s surely on her say-so, not yours.’ Having delivered her speech, Rita levered herself out of the chair, rested her hands on her hips and gazed about her in a proprietorial way. The gesture brought a chill to Daisy’s heart.

‘You can’t do this. I’ve turned it into a boarding house. At least, Clem and me has opened it up to a few lodgers. Most rooms are taken.’