Avalanche of Daisies (11 page)

The entire family followed him to the front door, his aunt and cousins happily, Barbara with growing anxiety. ‘Hain't I gonna meet your mum an' dad?' she asked.

‘Tomorrow,' he said and kissed her goodbye, a very proper kiss with all those eyes looking on. ‘Must go. My mates are waiting for me.'

She wanted to keep him there a bit longer, to argue that she really ought to meet his parents before the wedding, to beg him not to leave her alone, but he'd opened the door to the darkness outside and was already striding down the little path and hurdling over the gate. ‘The girls'll look after you, won't you girls,' he called. ‘See you tomorrow.'

She didn't want the girls to look after her. She wanted to be with him, not on her own in a strange house with strange people. How can he do this to me? she thought, staring into the darkness. Don't he realise how I feel? But apparently not, because he didn't even look back.

‘He's off drinking with his mates,' the big one explained, and she shut the door and adjusted the blackout curtain. ‘He always does that when he's home on leave. Come on. We got to show you round.'

The tone upset her. ‘You don' have to,' she said. ‘I aspect I can find my own way.'.

‘You want to know where you're going to sleep don't you?' the big girl asked, her glasses glinting in the half-light in the hall. She was nearly as tall as Barbara, and with that tightly permed hair and those round specs she looked and felt like an opponent.

‘Show her the bathroom first, our Joyce,' the smaller one said. ‘She might want to spend a penny.'

So she had to follow them and be shown. First they took her back to the kitchen, where their mother was clearing the table, and from there to the bathroom, which was a narrow room leading out of a scullery at the back of the house. She was impressed by it despite herself. Imagine having a lavvy inside the house! And a bath with a geyser for hot water. What luxury! They must be rich. But she didn't use the toilet, even though she wanted to. That would have been too embarrassing
with them waiting outside. So they led her upstairs to the front bedroom, which overlooked the street and was full of beds, a high double, a lower single, a camp bed virtually on the floor.

‘That's yours,' the little girl said. How pert she was with her short bob and that straight thick fringe. ‘That'll do, won't it.'

Be all the same if it wouldn't, Barbara thought as she nodded. But it was only for a night. Just one night. That was all.

‘You can put your things in here,' Joyce said, opening a drawer. ‘We cleared it out for you.' And she looked at the battered case that her guest had carried upstairs. ‘You won't need more room than that, will you?'

Barbara unpacked, as that seemed to be expected and the two girls sat on the double bed and quizzed her.

‘How long you been going out with our Steve?' Joyce began.

‘Ages,' Barbara told her, trying to slide her cheap underwear into the drawer before they could get a look at it.

It was a wasted effort. She'd never known two girls with such sharp eyes. ‘You should've got yourself some parachute silk,' the little one remarked. ‘You only need a panel and you can make all sorts a' things. Molly up the Co-op had petticoats and french knickers an' all sorts. You should've seen 'em.'

The bombardment went on. Was her hair natural or did she have it permed? Did she have any brothers or sisters? Were they coming to the wedding? Was that clogs she was wearing? ‘Look at that Hazel. All made a' wood. They must be ever so heavy. Are they heavy?'

‘Not parti'cly,' she said, daring them to disagree with her, and she folded her new blouse into the drawer and closed it quickly before they could make some disparaging remark about
that
too. ‘We going down now?'

‘Not yet,' Joyce said. ‘We got you a wedding dress.'

‘What?'

‘It's second-hand but it's only been worn the once,' Joyce said, pulling a large cardboard box from the top of the wardrobe. Then she giggled. ‘Well it would be, wouldn't it? It was Molly's up the Co-op. She says she was ever so happy when she wore it an' she hopes you'll be the same.' She took off the lid and removed two layers of tissue paper. ‘There you are. What d'you think?'

It was an ivory-coloured dress, short and silky with a straight skirt and a bodice covered in lace, and Barbara could see at a glance that it wouldn't fit her or suit her. ‘Well,' she said. ‘I don't know whether …'

‘Try it on,' they insisted, lifting it from the box. ‘See what it looks like. There's a veil there an' all. An' a tirrarra. You'd never get a new one, would you? Think of all the coupons.'

So she tried it on, as there didn't seem to be any way of refusing without being rude to them. And it didn't fit. ‘Thass ever so kind of you,' she said, relieved that she'd be able to escape from the awful thing so easily. ‘But thass too big. You can see can't you.' And she pinched the excess cloth in the bodice and held it away from her.

‘Oh we'll soon have that fixed,' Joyce said briskly. ‘Stand in front a' the mirror an we'll pin it to size. We can do what we like with it. She said.'

There was a pin cushion on the dressing table hedgehogged with pins. Within seconds she had half a dozen of them clenched between her lips and was busy at work nipping and tucking, while her sister hovered and gave advice. ‘Bit further over our Joyce … Little tuck under the bust … Not that much. You're pullin' the seam.'

‘There y'are,' they chorused when they'd finished. ‘Put the veil on. Get the full effect. You look smashing. Like a film star.'

But when Barbara turned to the mirror to see what they'd done to her, she didn't look smashing. She
looked ridiculous. Stiff and awkward and unrecognisable. Like a badly-dressed doll with her bodice pulled over sideways and her hem uneven. I can't wear this, she thought, staring at her reflection. I simply can't.

‘Well ain't that lovely!' a voice said from the landing and there was Aunt Mabel, smiling approval. ‘Well done you two. It's a transformation.'

But I don't want to be transformed, Barbara thought. I want to be me.

‘That's the borrowed bit taken care of,' Hazel said, as she and Joyce pulled the dress over Barbara's head. ‘An' the old. That veil's ever so old. And the ring'll be new. Now we've just got to work on the blue. Bit a' blue ribbon'ud do. We could make a garter or something or tie it round the flowers.'

‘What flowers?' Barbara asked shaking her head free.

‘We're gonna cut the lilac,' Hazel told her. ‘It's lovely this year. It'll be a bit heavy but you won't mind that, will you.'

‘Dad'll find a bit a' broom handle to hold it up,' their mother said. ‘Right. That's all settled then. We'll hang that up in the wardrobe for now. It's almost time for Bebe Daniels.'

‘Can't miss that,' Joyce agreed. ‘Then I'll have to do my hair or I shall look a fright in the morning. What time's our Betty coming home?'

So there's another one of them. I thought two was bad enough.

‘Late,' their mother said. ‘She won't wake you. You can have another hour listening to the wireless and then you'd all better turn in. We've got a lot to do tomorrow.'

So they had another hour, which Barbara found difficult even with the wireless to keep them entertained. Then they went to bed.

The two girls bounced into their double bed and were asleep in minutes but Barbara couldn't settle. The camp bed was as uncomfortable as it looked, the house was
unfamiliar, and the dress loomed in the wardrobe like a threat. What have I let myself in for? she wondered as she tried to turn over without waking her new cousins. Do I want to belong to this family? To be here in this huge town, where I don't fit, with all these people who give me funny looks an' don't like me? She wasn't even sure she wanted to get married. Not now. And not here. Oh dear, she thought, what have I done?

Presently she could hear someone tiptoeing up the stairs and along the landing and she lay very still in the camp bed with her eyes shut pretending to be asleep, as another girl came in and undressed quickly and eased into the single bed. Our Betty. Should I say something to her? she wondered. And decided against it. This is all a mistake, she thought as sleep dragged her away, an' I shall have to say so in the morning.

But the next morning her new cousins let her lie in and didn't wake her until nine o'clock when Joyce arrived with tea and toast on a tin tray and the news that it was a beautiful day and that she was to have a bath ‘all to herself' because she was the bride.

‘We share ours', she confided, ‘to save water. But Mum says you're the special one today. And she says you're to borrow Bet's dressing gown because there's all sorts in the kitchen.'

Never a truer word. By the time Barbara came downstairs to take her promised bath, swathed in the prescribed dressing gown and feeling very self-conscious, the kitchen was full of people. ‘Here's the bride!' they called. ‘How are you duck?' The dresser was mounded with cut lilac and Betty and Hazel were hard at work in their petticoats making buttonholes and an enormous bouquet, neighbours ran in and out with boxes, her new aunt was pouring tea, there were two women by the table gossiping and making sandwiches, Joyce was standing in the hearth, half an inch away from the mirror, wincing as she took the curlers out of her hair, and a man in his shirtsleeves who said he was
‘your new uncle Sid', was sitting in the corner patiently cutting the end off a broom handle.

So the bath was rather an uneasy luxury. It was blissful to be able to lie out full length in scented water – for the first time in her life what's more – but her thoughts were spinning with anxiety. What if someone was to come in to use the lavvy? Why hadn't Steve taken her to meet his parents? What if her mum had found out and came up to London to stop them?

Presently she became aware that the two girls were in the scullery and that they were exchanging scurrilous confidences in the low, slightly shocked tones reserved for these occasions. So naturally she listened. And realised with a shock of anger that the person they were disparaging was her.

‘She's taking for ever in that bath,' Hazel was saying. ‘What you think she's up to?'

‘Expect she's dirty,' Joyce confided. ‘I don't suppose they have baths where she comes from. Out in the country.'

‘D'you see her knickers?' Hazel giggled.

‘Weren't they
awful
!'

‘Ghastly. An' those clogs! Fancy wearing them round town. She looks a proper clodhopper. I'd die if it was me.'

‘I don't know what our Steve saw in her. I mean, she's nothing to look at and the way she talks! All that oo-ar stuff.
Thass
this an'
thass
that.'

‘Oo-ar, oo-ar, the country bumpkin,' Hazel said. And they both giggled as they walked away.

Their mockery stiffened Barbara's resolve. Right, she thought furiously. Thass it. I hain't wearing that rotten frock an' you needn't think it. I
would
be a country bumpkin in that.

She climbed out of the bath, dried quickly and swathed in the dressing gown, strode through the kitchen and straight upstairs to dress as she pleased.

It took quite an effort because her skin was still damp
but she was ready – in her green skirt, her pretty blouse and her country bumpkin clogs – before anyone came up to see how she was getting on. And then, mercifully, it was Betty and not her two horrid sisters.

She was carrying an enormous bouquet of white lilac and was watching it carefully as she walked in. ‘No one's to see you till the car comes,' she said. ‘Otherwise it's bad luck. Hazel says to tell you your blue ribbon's in the lilac. Tied round the handle.' Then she looked up and stopped, her eyes widening. ‘You're not wearing the dress then?'

‘No,' Barbara said boldly. ‘That makes me look a freak.' And she waited, prepared to be mocked or scolded or argued with.

But Betty smiled at her. ‘Quite right,' she said. ‘You wear what you want. I know I would.'

She understands, Barbara thought. I've got a friend in this family. She's an ally. ‘Thanks,' she said and smiled.

Betty smiled back. ‘I'm Betty by the way,' she said. ‘Came back too late to be introduced last night. You were asleep.'

‘I wasn't actually,' Barbara admitted. ‘I was pretending. I'd have known who you were anyway. You're ever so like Steve.' The same brown eyes, the same smile, the same thick hair only brown instead of auburn and fashionably long, in a page-boy bob to her shoulders and mounded above her forehead in two elaborate scrolls. A face with strength and honesty in it, the scarlet mouth firm and shapely, nose straight, eyebrows unplucked. A friendly face.

Betty was thinking, brown eyes clouded. ‘Would you mind if I asked you something?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘Well then. Have you got a hat?'

‘No,' Barbara admitted. ‘Didn't have the coupons.'

‘Hang on a tick,' Betty said and ran out of the room, her blue cotton dress swishing with the urgency of her
stride. She was back in seconds, carrying a hat, which she held out to Barbara balanced on the tips of her fingers. It was a very pretty hat, made of cream-coloured straw with a trimming of blue forget-me-nots around the brim.

‘You can borrow this if you like,' she said. And when Barbara hesitated, ‘It's all right. It's not some old second-hand thing like that dress. I bought it new.'

‘But don't you want to wear it yourself?' Barbara asked. ‘I mean, if you bought it new …'

‘That's right,' Betty said, understanding her completely. ‘I bought it for the wedding. But I've got another one and you're the bride. Go on, borrow it. I'd love you to. If you like it, I mean. Try it on.'