Liverpool Daisy (19 page)

Meg held her breath, expecting an immediate outcry from Nellie. But Nellie was too heavy with drugs and too anxious about her friend’s fainting to realise at that point the import of
the marks; and the crisis passed.

Mechanically Nellie reached over to Daisy’s shawl end and folded it over her nakedness. Then she closed her eyes as she herself felt faintness stealing over her.

“Go back to bed, Nellie,” implored Meg, afraid she might have a second woman collapse on the overcrowded hearth rug. “I’ll get Daise round. She had to walk from town and it was too much for her.”

Nellie opened her eyes and looked blearily at Meg. A tear welled from one eye. She said clearly, “Aye, she’s doin’ too much — an’ all for me, poor dear.” Then her mind seemed to wander again. She began to rock herself slowly backwards and forwards and to keen softly to herself as if Daisy were dead.

“Now, Nell, don’t upset yourself. She’s got a bit of colour in her cheeks now — she’s coming round.” Meg laid Daisy’s head carefully down on the dusty rug. She got to her feet and gently lifted Nellie up. She was shocked as she felt how wasted Nellie’s frame was.

With many backward glances, the invalid allowed herself to be half carried upstairs again.

Meg hastily flipped the bedclothes over Nellie and rushed back downstairs.

As Meg approached her, Daisy opened her eyes. “Where am I?” she asked, and then, as her strength returned, “What happened?”

Meg stood over Daisy, arms akimbo. “You fainted,” she said shortly, fuming irritation replacing her earlier fears.

Daisy raised herself on her elbow and put her hand to her bumped head.

She remembered the wallet, and again she felt as if she would faint. She flopped back on to the rug and instinctively pulled her shawl over herself. She closed her eyes again and, while her senses swam, she tried frantically to find a likely sounding explanation for the presence of the wallet.

Meg picked up the wallet. Her eyes were hard now, as she
observed a return of more natural colour to Daisy’s face. She’s faking, she thought, as she lovingly rubbed her fingers over the old wallet. And now I’ve got you, she addressed her thoughts to Daisy, and I can make you crawl like a dog that’s been kicked. I’ll shut your gob for you for ever.

Daisy had no illusions about Meg’s ability to use the finding of the wallet as a tool to discredit her, both with family and neighbours. Meg would enjoy succeeding her as the Nan.

Slowly, as her senses returned, and she felt the warmth from the fire penetrating her cold body, inspiration came to her. She wanted to laugh. She glanced at Meg through the shadow of her lashes. Meg had sat down on the easy chair and her face was creased in a thin, satisfied smile. She held the wallet in her hand.

I’ll wipe that grin off your bloody face, Daisy promised herself.

“Help me up, Meg,” she ordered with deceptive quietness.

Meg was startled out of her daydreams. She put the wallet down on the floor, sprang up from the chair and, making every movement very warily, she helped to raise Daisy to her feet.

Daisy flopped into the chair that Meg had vacated. Meg righted the wooden chair which had fallen over when Daisy slipped off it; she did not sit down on it, however, but watched Daisy with narrow, distrustful eyes, one hand clenching the chair back.

Daisy took her time. She rested for a moment with her head leaning against the aged upholstery. Then she bent slowly down and retrieved the wallet from the floor.

“You was showing me me wallet,” she remarked in dulcet tones. “I’m sorry I fainted on yez. It was the long walk home what did it.”

At the sweetness of the voice, Meg felt like taking off like a
coursing greyhound. She stood poised half on her toes, unsure from which direction the attack would come. “
Your
wallet!” she exclaimed, her voice pitched high with nervous strain. “It’s got papers belonging to a man called Tom Ward in it.”

“I know. Iddy Joey found it a long time ago and gave it to me. I kept the photos and such to show to Mike. There was no money in it, so I thought I might as well keep it and put me own savings in it.” With elaborate nonchalance she opened the wallet, looked surprised and ran her fingers round the various pockets.

“Where’s me money? Me savings?”

“What money? There wasn’t any money in it.”

“Yes, there was, Missus.” Daisy raised an accusing finger and stabbed at Meg with it. “What you done with it?”

A frightened cry of inquiry from Nellie above stairs was ignored by both sisters.

It was the turn of Meg’s face to drain of colour.

“There wasn’t any money,” she declared stoutly. “You’re just saying there was to make trouble.” She put her hands on her hips and stuck her nose in the air defiantly.

Daisy was feeling stronger now. She got up slowly and threateningly from the chair. “Oh, yes, there was,” she declared. “I got over five pound in there — in ten shilling notes,” she added, to give an air of veracity to her accusation.

Meg leaned forward, so that her face was within a foot of Daisy’s.

“Well, there wasn’t when I found it,” she retorted hotly. “You’re just trying to get out of telling me how you come by that wallet.” She snatched up her shawl from the back of a chair and began a retreat to the door. “Maybe iddy Joey or George knows where it is,” she insinuated cunningly.

“Not they. How would they know it was under the mattress?”

As Meg retreated, Daisy advanced towards her, chin thrust out, arms swinging, until Meg was pinned against the closed
front door.

“I want me money back,” hissed Daisy, feeling strength surge back into her.

Upstairs, Nellie began to cough, but neither sister heeded it. They were engaged in a test which went beyond the matter of the wallet; the real dispute between them was about who would rule the family, who would be the Nan in place of their late mother.

Frightened though she was, Meg had no intention of giving up the fight. With her back against the door, she endeavoured to push her stout sister away from her.

“I haven’t got your bloody money. I don’t believe you had any. Lemme go.”

“You calling me a liar?” Daisy raised her clenched fist to strike.

“No!” She struggled with her hands on her sister’s shoulders to push her away. “Yes, I mean.…”

Daisy’s fist caught her on her cheek, and Meg’s head swung to one side with the force of the blow. She clapped one hand to her face. “You stinking bitch!” she screamed, and kicked her sister’s shins with two fast movements.

Though muffled by her thick skirt, the kicks from such heavy boots hurt; and Daisy, mouthing curses, seized Meg’s bun of hair and twisted it painfully, meanwhile taking a battering on her chest from Meg’s fists.

Shawls fell off and blouses burst at the armpits.

Joey woke suddenly to the sound of female combat and with a sob of dismay hid his head under the filthy bolster. Long experience had taught him not to intervene in adult disputes; you could end up being beaten yourself.

In her room, Nellie wept silently.

Daisy hauled hard on Meg’s hair. It came loose from its few hairpins, and Meg clawed at her sister’s face to make her lose her hold. Struggling and screaming obscenities, they staggered round the tiny room, as Meg fought to get free. With a quick
lunge she gave Daisy a wicked scratch on the face.

Daisy let go, and instinctively put her hands to her face to protect herself from another quick rip. She jumped back and seized a chipped enamel plate from the crowded table. She flung it like a boomerang at Meg. It missed and crashed against the fireplace.

Meg whipped round to look for a suitable missile. Another plate zoomed over her head. She ducked towards the hearth, picked up the poker and sent it flying murderously in Daisy’s direction. A tin mug flew back at her and caught her on the shoulder.

In a paroxysm of rage, Meg lifted one of the china dogs from the mantelpiece and raised it to take careful aim at Daisy.

Daisy, a chair lifted above her head, stopped dead.

“You throw that, y’ divil, and I’ll kill yez!” The snarl was so intense, the threat so forceful, that it penetrated through the fog of Meg’s hysterical rage.

“And why not, you great fat turd?”

“It’s our Bridie’s and she loves it.”

“No, it isn’t. It was Nan’s.”

Meg began slowly to skirt round the easy chair, swinging the china dog maddeningly between two fingers.

“I won’t stand for it!” screamed Daisy, and lunged towards her. She tripped over Mike’s kitbag, stumbled and fell. Sprawled on her stomach, she pounded the ancient flagstones with her fists. “I won’t stand for it! I won’t! I’ll tell your John, I will.”

The original reason for the fight was forgotten in this new threat to her grandchild’s plaything. In total hysteria she flung herself over on to her back. Then pounding her heels on the floor like an outraged child and her fists flaying in a similar tattoo, she screamed again and again.

Joey whimpered in terror, and Mike snored on.

Meg ran forward, picking up her shawl as she ran.

With great care she held the dog over Daisy’s face, as, with eyes close shut, Daisy yelled on. Then she dropped the prized
possession on the gaping mouth. It was sufficiently heavy to bring a trickle of blood from Daisy’s nose and to bruise her already sore mouth. It bounced off her and smashed on to the stone floor.

Daisy stopped in mid-stream at the sound of breakage. She rolled on to her side, saw the scattered pieces of china, and nearly blind with rage, she shot out a hand to catch Meg by the ankle as she made for the door. Meg was quicker. She grasped the latch, kicked out at her sister, opened the door and fled into the silent night.

Nellie lay helpless upon her bed, slow tears welling from half closed eyes. Daisy and Meg had been fighting all their lives and Nellie had regarded the spates of rage and jealousy with humorous exasperation, something to be borne patiently till they wore themselves out, like the sudden rainstorms that sometimes swept up the river to soak a pile of washing newly pegged out in the back yard. Tonight, however, the turmoil seemed almost unbearable. Her fever seemed to have left her temporarily and her senses seemed unnaturally acute; even the sound of a bug falling off the wall came to her with irritating clarity. She sobbed silently to herself.

Meg’s sudden exit silenced Daisy. There is no pleasure in enacting a great drama without an audience. And with the loss of the treasured china dog, real tragedy had suddenly entered the scene. She lay still on the stone floor, her nose running with blood. Then she wiped the gory trickle with the back of her hand. The blood thus revealed to her would have caused her to faint again, if she had not still been boiling with a terrible, cold fury.

“I’d like to feed her powdered glass, I would,” she hissed.

It was anger which gave her the strength to get up in response to a nervous cry from Nellie.

She staggered to the foot of the stairs.

“I’ll be up in a minute, ducks,” she called softly. Her breath came in gasps, and she was still raging inwardly while she ran the kitchen tap and splashed water on her face to clean the
blood off it and ease the pain of her swollen lip. Every bone in her body ached, every muscle seemed to have its own peculiar pain; yet the excitement of her fury gave her the energy to move swiftly.

She lit a candle and, with bodice still unbuttoned, she climbed the stairs, and passed through to Nellie’s room, without so much as a glance at her inebriated spouse or iddy Joey, who was cowering under his bolster.

Nellie was lying on her bed, with the blankets flung off her, as if she had tried to get up again and had failed. She sighed with relief at the sight of Daisy.

“Daise, whatever happened between you and Meg?” Her voice, though weak, was clearer than it had been for several days.

Daisy made herself laugh. “Me and Meg got into a fight — as usual. She’s got a filthy temper, as you well know.” She put the candlestick down on a large paint drum which George had brought in for use as a bedside table. “It’s proper late — you should be asleep, luv.”

“Aye, I know. Sit down with me a bit, Daise. I got fair shook up by the noise — and I couldn’t come down again. We can sleep a bit in the morning.” She shivered. “And I’ve gone and got meself cold, like a mug, pushin’ off the blankets.”

Daisy nodded soberly. Her anger left her as she lifted the bedclothes and covered Nellie. She glanced hastily at the fire grate — the fire was still quite good.

“Sit with me, Daise.” Nellie struggled to get one hand free; and Daisy loosened the covers so that she could do this, and then sat down on the side of the bed. Her weight was sufficient to make the bed dip; and Nellie rolled half on her side towards her.

The glow of the fire lit up Nellie’s tiny hand, mis-shapen by rheumatism and work, as she lifted it to stroke Daisy’s ruffled hair. The candle on the oil drum flickered and flared in the breeze from the window.

Nellie let her swollen forefinger travel down the line of Daisy’s neck till it pointed to the marks on her breasts. She tried to lift her head to peer closely.

“Daise,” she cried incredulously. “What you been doing? You’re marked all over.” Her eyes twinkled suddenly. “Mike been busy with you?”

The twinkle faded. Nellie’s eyes widened as if with shock. “Mike only come home a little while back. I heard him. You won’t have seen him yet — he’s never stirred from his bed since he come up.” She stopped to cough and then swallowed hard. Her head fell back on the pillow. “Daise, what
have
you been up to?”

“Oh, nothin’.” Daisy yawned heavily and hastily closed the blouse with its hooks and eyes. “You get all kinds of bruises when you’re workin’. Movin’ a lot of bloody bottle around, you get clumsy by the end of the shift.”

Nellie was not convinced. She slipped her hand into Daisy’s, while with apprehensive, honest eyes, she appraised Daisy’s weary, scratched face and swollen lips. Daisy’s hand was remarkably soft, considering she was supposed to have been washing bottles for nights on end.

“You should get to sleep,” repeated Daisy. Her own fatigue was so great that she could hardly mouth the words coherently. Her muddled mind could hold only the idea that she would never forgive Meg as long as she lived for breaking the china dog; she’d learn her who was boss, if it took her till the end of time.

Nellie’s feeble voice forced her to attend. Nellie was saying, “Them’s love bites on you. I seen ’em when I was downstairs, but I was proper confused and I didn’t think I was seeing right.” She touched one deep red imprint gently with a finger. “And not one man did all that, Daise.”

The shock of this deduction made Daisy jump, and Nellie felt the tremor through her friend’s hand. No! O Holy Virgin say it’s not true, Nellie silently implored. But with the clarity of vision
sometimes granted to the dying, she looked into Daisy’s deep-set eyes, as Daisy sought frantically for a feasible explanation to give to Nellie; and she saw that it was true.

“You’re on the streets? It’s true, isn’t it, Daise? There ain’t no bottle factory.” The whispering voice gathered horror, “Daise! You done it for me.”

“Nah. Me? What chance would I have on the streets? I’m too fat. You don’t have to worry about me. You just go to sleep and sleep yourself better. I’m O.K.” She turned her face away from Nellie’s intent gaze and sought to release her hand, but Nellie’s grasp tightened.

“Stay a bit, Daise. I got to know. I’m not long for this world, Daise, and I got a lot to say as well as a lot to know.” The long sentence took her strength and she closed her eyes and winced in pain. Then she said gently, “We never had secrets from each other from the time we was little kids playing on the Cassie and watching the tide come in, now did we?”

At this recollection of their shared childhood, Daisy’s eyes began to fill with tears. She said firmly, despite her desire to cry, “You ain’t going to die yet. Doctor says so.”

“Don’t try to kid me, Daise. I know. Sometimes I think I see the Holy Angels from the Throne of Light waiting for me.” She gestured towards the open window, and Daisy instinctively turned round to look out. She almost expected to see a Heavenly Host fluttering in the darkness outside.

Nellie sighed, and said, “It’s just a little while now.”

Daisy’s lips trembled. “No,” she muttered vehemently, “No!”

She flung her arms round the invalid and laid her head on her shoulder, but there was not enough room on the bed for her to lie beside Nellie and she slid to her knees on the floor. She clasped her friend to her and tears poured down her scratched face. “Don’t say that, Nell.”

Her face was close to Nellie’s and Nellie gently touched the wet cheeks with her free hand. “Don’t cry, Daise. You done so much for me … and I’m afraid what else you done.”

Daisy sobbed softly, her face half hidden by her loosened hair in which a few white hairs glinted in the candle light. The room was silent, except for Daisy’s lament, and Nellie could clearly hear Mike’s steady snores from the other room. In Nellie’s mind, the snores boded ill for Daisy. If Mike saw those marks he would beat the daylights out of her; not, thought Nellie cynically, because he really cared much, but he would feel that he was supposed to do something. It would express his continuing authority over his wife without much permanent damage being done; he could then forgive her magnanimously. But he would never fail to bring the matter up whenever they quarrelled again — and this would drive Daisy mad with rage.

“Daisy, lovie,” she said weakly. “Listen to me, Daise. Why did you go on the streets?”

Daisy half lifted her head from Nellie’s shoulder. Her voice was muffled by the folds of her friend’s flannel nightgown. “I never.”

“You must have done ’cos of the hickies and that.”

“No, I never.”

But Nellie pressed, and finally Daisy sniffed, “Well, what if I did?”

“Oh, Daise — and for my sake?”

Daisy turned her wet face towards Nellie, and wagged her head negatively. “No, not just for you.”

“Well, how come?”

Daisy hung her head. She was so tired and she longed to sleep. But again Nellie asked.

“It were an accident,” she said dully, and she went on to tell the story of her new teeth and how she had met the three young sailors and how lonely she had been. “I needed the money as well,” she said sulkily, “’Cos our Mam took her pension with her when she died.”

“God save us,” breathed Nellie, “And Meg atop of that.”

“Aye, Meg. She was set on being the Nan, though she’s younger’n me.”

Poor Daisy, with her own children scattered or dead. It was against nature, reflected Nellie. And Maureen Mary never lifting a finger to help her mother. It was too hard.

Tenderly she stroked Daisy’s hair.

“You might have caught the pox,” she said suddenly.

Daisy jumped. She had not seriously considered this danger, except to heed Ivy’s warning to avoid Americans. She shrugged her aching shoulders, however, while weary sobs ran through her plump body. Then she whispered sadly. “Lots o’ people got it, anyway. Wouldn’t be so many blind kids if it wasn’t so.” She paused, and then said heavily, “Suppose I could get it from Mike, anyway. He’s got an eye for the girls, he has.”

Nellie ignored this last remark; there was no point in adding to matrimonial strife. “The scuffer might have caught you and then in gaol you’d be for sure.”

“Och, no. Just one night and the next day the beak fines you. I got enough money to pay, if I ever have to.”

“That’s bad enough, on top of everything else. Listen, Daise, I got to ask you something.”

Nellie sighed, and a spasm of coughing which she did her best to suppress bothered her painfully for a minute or two. Daisy bestirred herself. Still on her knees, she measured out a dose of medicine into a sticky spoon and gave it to Nellie. It seemed to relieve the coughing, and Nellie continued, “Daisy, when I die will you take iddy Joey and be a mother to him.”

“Well, you’re not going to die.” The response was mechanical and did not carry conviction.

“Well, if I do?”

“Of course, I will. You know that.”

“Would Mike mind if George came back here, too?”

“Not if I say so.”

“Well, take care of him, too, Daise. He’s a good carter — he knows horses — and he’ll get work again one of these days and maybe stop drinking — he never drank, as you well know, until he’d been out of work so long that he lost hope. And the pain
from his old wound in his back hurts real bad sometimes. Nobody’d take care of him like you would, Daise — putting hot poultices on, like.”

Daisy gave a weak, affirmative nod.

“And he’ll bring a bit of money into the house even if it’s only a bit of relief — you must say he’s a lodger, not your brother — so the Relieving Officer don’t cut it down ’cos you’ve got money coming in from Mike. What with him and Mike together, you might be able to manage for all of you and not have to go on the streets — oh, Daise, that was proper awful.” She made a clucking sound of disapproval, and then said, “And one of these days Elizabeth Ann and Jamie will finish their time and come ’ome — and they’ll bring money in — and a husband or wife, maybe, to help out.”

Daisy had ceased to sob. She lay almost in a coma while Nellie slowly built her a family over which to rule. Nellie was right. Even if she did not die and Daisy did not inherit her family, Elizabeth Ann would undoubtedly come home to her mother one day. And maybe Maureen Mary, too, for all her swanky husband and fancy house, if Daisy played her cards right. And little Bridie — there was still one china dog for her to play with. At the memory of the broken ornament, some of her lethargy left her and she nearly choked as her ire rose in her.

“You’re a dear, Nell,” she burst out passionately. “You’ve got to get better.”

But Nellie only smiled enigmatically and continued to stroke her friend’s hair. Then the immense effort she had made to soothe Daisy became too much for her. Her hand fell to her stomach and she closed her eyes. Daisy started uneasily to get to her feet.

Nellie’s eyes shot open; they were twinkling faintly.

“And there’s one thing, Daise. You know that high necked blouse you got?”

“Yes?”

“You wear it for the next few weeks. Mike never makes love
with a light on, does he?”

“Oh, no.” Daisy was shocked at the idea, though many of her clients had demanded that the candle be left lit. But they were not her husband.

“Then if you’re careful, he don’t need to know about anything, and you’ll be all right, won’t you now?”

Slowly Daisy nodded agreement, and the friends smiled at each other.