Avalanche of Daisies (3 page)

‘I suppose I'd get thumped if I was to offer you my arm.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘You would. I'm an independent spirit, I'll have you know, not some ol' lady with a walkin' stick.'

So they walked on sedately, side by side, she still shivering, he struggling to think of something to say. Something non-committal. Or a joke maybe. She didn't seem to notice his silence. Or perhaps she just wasn't troubled by it.

In fact the expression on his face was making her feel guilty. Well not exactly guilty. That was too strong. Aware that she might have hurt his feelings. It was a novel sensation. Usually she rebuffed advances without giving a thought to the consequences. But this time it was different. This time she felt she had to make amends.

Presently she turned her head towards him and asked him a question. ‘You come from London, don't you?'

Relieved to be talking again, he was happy to admit that he did.

‘Whereabouts in London?'

They were halfway across the square. ‘New Cross,' he told her.

‘Where's that?'

‘South-east. Near Greenwich.'

‘Ah!' She'd heard of Greenwich. ‘I've always wanted to go to London. Never have, with the war an' everything. What's it like?'

He was at a loss to know how to begin to tell her. ‘Big,' he said, at last. ‘Friendly. We live by the station. My dad's a signalman. Well one of the stations, I suppose I should say. We've got two.'

‘So have we,' she said, not to be outdone.

‘Not in the same road though. Not side by side in the same road.'

That she allowed. ‘An' now you're going to France.'

‘That's the plan.' He tried to sound as though he was making light of it, but it was a moment of pride to admit it, just the same. It reinstated him.

Her friends were turning a corner, giggling, their dark silhouettes disappearing into the shadows.

‘I think you're very brave,' she said. ‘Knowin' you got to go, knowin' you got to fight.' And she thought, knowing you might get killed.

‘I've known that since the start,' he told her seriously. ‘I mean, I was fourteen when the war broke out so I knew I was bound to be in it, sooner or later. After Dunkirk, I mean, well we all knew then.'

‘I was twelve when it started,' she told him. ‘Still at school. I suppose you were out to work.'

They turned into the dark lane. He would have to admit to his education now and, after what she'd said while they were dancing, he was afraid she might disapprove of it. ‘Well no,' he said. ‘I was at school too. I stayed on till I was eighteen. I was at grammar school.' And when she didn't comment, ‘It doesn't give us all the wrong ideas. I mean, we don't all throw our weight around like that Vic feller. Some of us are quite nice.'

‘You mustn't mind what I say,' she told him looking at him seriously. ‘That was just sour grapes talkin'. I was better'n him when we were at St Nick's. I used to come top a' the class most weeks. Drove him crackers. He wasn't the only one to win a scholarship. I got one too. Only he went to the grammar an' I didn't. Thass the difference.'

He was shocked to hear such a thing. ‘But that's terrible,' he said. ‘D'you mean to say you won a scholarship to a grammar school and didn't take it?'

‘Couldn't afford to,' she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Anyway girls don't. Leastways, girls what live in the North End don't, an' thass about all there is to that.'

‘Well it shouldn't be,' he said hotly. ‘It's a waste. And it's not fair. If you had the brains to go to a grammar school, you should have gone.'

‘Well it's done now,' turning her face and her mind away from the subject. ‘No use cryin' over spilt milk. There's nothing I can do about it.'

‘Not now, maybe. But when you're twenty-one you can do something.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like vote for a different government,' he told her. ‘One that'll make some changes.'

They'd reached a dark alleyway. ‘We're here,' she said. ‘I live just up the alley.'

‘Come on then,' he said, turning into the darkness.

The offer felt like an intrusion. ‘You don't have to come all the way,' she said. ‘I can make my own way now.'

‘I'm taking you to your door,' he said firmly.

‘But this is the North End,' she warned. ‘I mean …'

‘To your door,' he said, leading the way.

‘Wait till I light my torch then,' she said. ‘Thass a death-trap along here. I don't want you walking into bike or nothin'.'

The alley led into a yard, very dark and evil-smelling, like a cross between a fish shop and a dirty public
lavatory. Two rows of small houses stood facing one another across the uneven cobbles. There was a runnel down the centre where he caught a glimpse of water, and odd dark shapes in every corner, mangles, buckets, bicycles, tin baths, an old pram, a ladder, swathes of nets. She was right about the need for a torch.

She led him through the yard, round the corner alongside one of the houses into another, and through that into a third.

‘Thass a proper ol' rabbit warren,' she said, stopping at last in front of one of the dark doors and speaking in a whisper. ‘I did warn you.'

He whispered too. ‘Is this where you live?'

‘Yup. This is where I live. This is Rag's Yard.'

He was almost as horrified by the yard as he'd been by her deprived education. ‘What, all of you?' he asked, wondering how they all fitted in. ‘You and your brothers and … everything.'

‘No, not my brothers and
everything,'
she said, stung by his implied criticism. ‘Just me an' my aunt. I had to move out when Jimmy was born. There wasn't room for all of us at home.'

He was more horrified than ever. Fancy being moved out of your own house because there wasn't room for you. But he didn't say anything because he'd annoyed her enough already. And besides, he was trying to find the words to ask her to go out with him again.

‘Look,' he said, forgetting to whisper. ‘You don't have to work tomorrow or anything, do you? I mean being Sunday …'

She put a finger to her lips in warning and answered him very quietly. ‘I help my aunt with the housework of a Sunday.'

‘But not all day,' he urged, this time remembering to whisper. ‘I mean, I could get a couple of hours off in the afternoon. I could get a bus over. We could go for a walk or something. Or the pictures. I mean if you'd like to.'

She was caught between annoyance at his criticism and curiosity about what it would be like to go out with him. She looked up at him for such a long time, while she considered it, that the wait made him breathless. Then curiosity won. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Where d'you want to meet?'

‘By the Corn Exchange. Half past three.'

It was agreed. This gorgeous, extraordinary girl was going to see him again. He'd made a date. He was so happy he wanted to leap about and shout. It took all his self-control to restrict himself to shifting his feet.

‘Yes. You'd better go,' she said misinterpreting the signs. ‘Take my torch, or you'll never find your way out.'

But even with the torchlight to guide him, he was in a state of such clumsy elation, he tripped over a bucket and stumbled into a mangle.

Her whispered query breathed across the alley. ‘You all right?'

‘Two broken legs,' he joked back. ‘Few cracked ribs. Never felt better.'

‘Idiot!' she laughed. And opened the door.

It was very dark inside the house, for the blackout curtains were drawn, the oil lamp was out and the fire had dwindled to a single coal which was little more than a pink glow in a heap of whitening ash and gave out no light at all. Fortunately, being in the dark didn't worry Barbara Nelson. Not that she would have admitted to it if it had. Having grown up in the North End, with a harsh-tongued fisherman for a father, she'd learned to keep her fears hidden from a very early age. In fact, it was her mother's proud boast that ‘our Babs' was the toughest thing in shoe-leather. ‘Blust gal!' she would brag to her neighbours. ‘She don' turn hair fer nothin'.'

Until that evening Barbara had shared her opinion. Now she wasn't quite so sure, for her hair was bristling from nape to forehead and her head was so full of unfamiliar emotions that she felt quite giddy under their impact. Had she really agreed to go out with a soldier? She, hard-to-get, wise-cracking, independent Spitfire Nelson, the girl who made mincemeat of wolves? What on earth had got into her?

She picked her way through the furniture to the mantelpiece, scrabbled her fingers along it until she found the candlestick and matches and produced a light. But then, instead of removing her coat and tiptoeing upstairs to bed as she usually did on a Saturday night, she stood before the hearth, candlestick in hand and leant forward towards the mirror. She'd never been vain. She was too busy and too sensible for that. So it was most unlike her to spend time gazing at her reflection. But everything she'd done that evening had been unlike her – at least everything she'd done after
she met Steve Wilkins. Just talking to him had made her feel special. And the look on his face when he'd asked her out had been the best of all. That had made her feel beautiful. To remember it made her blush, even there in the chill of that small cold room.

She put her free hand against her cheek to hold back its rising warmth, and thought how silly she was being. She wasn't beautiful. She was just Barbara Nelson who lived in the North End and was very ordinary.

But the person who gazed back at her from the mirror was unlike any image of herself she'd ever seen. The funny face she'd accepted until then, with its odd-shaped nose, its rough skin and its mop of uncontrollable hair, had been transformed. What she saw now was almost ethereal, heart-shaped and dreamy and set off by a halo of thick, dark, contented curls, with skin the colour of apricots, brow and cheekbones gilded by candlelight, eyes huge and lustrous. She gazed and gazed until her breath misted the glass. How could she look so serene when her thoughts were in such a turmoil?

And come to that, how could she look so innocent when she'd just been telling lies? Well not exactly lies perhaps, but not the whole truth, and she'd always been a stickler for the truth. But tonight, when Steve had asked her whether she and Vic were related, she'd said no, at once and without thinking, and that wasn't strictly true. And it wasn't fair to Vic either. Until that evening, she'd accepted that they were as good as engaged. Not committed, with a ring and everything, but sort of understood so that she knew what sort of direction her life was going to take – a few years earning her living and larking about with her friends, dancing and going to the pictures, keeping her admirers at arm's length, a little while in the army if the war was still going on when she was eighteen, and then she and Vic would get married and settle down and raise a family the same as everyone else in the North End. They'd been going out,
off and on, since she was sixteen and although she didn't exactly love him, she liked him well enough, they got on all right, they were well matched. And she knew how to handle him, which was half the battle when it came to being married. Now she wasn't so sure that that was what she wanted to do. In fact, she wasn't sure about anything. I don't know what's got into me, she thought.

But that wasn't true. She
did
know. It was because Steve was so attractive. Because he wouldn't take no for an answer. Because he was tougher than she was. Not tough in the way she was used to in the North End, all fists and mouth, but in a gentle way. Strong and silent, leading her away from trouble, with his hand under her elbow, insisting without saying a word. She'd never been treated like that before, not in the whole of her life. And especially by such a looker. The way he laughed, throwing back his head, brown eyes shining. You could like him for that alone. And she did like him. There was no doubt about that. She liked him very much. He couldn't jitterbug for toffee nuts but waltzing with him had been terrific. She'd fancied quite a lot of young men in the last couple of years but always in a rather cerebral way, aware of their charm but physically unmoved by them. Now it made her blush for the second time that evening to remember what she'd been feeling as she danced with this one.

Behind her, the room was in its usual evening order, clean, tidy and swept speckless, but for once that was an irritant to her rather than a comfort. It wasn't right for the world to be so ordinary and predictable when she had changed so much. She could still smell the sausage and chips that she and her aunt had eaten for supper although the gate-legged table had been cleared, folded down and stood against the wall, all crumbs had been burnt, the frying pan scoured clean, and the remaining food carefully stored away, marge in its dish, bread in its tin. Her aunt Becky was a careful housewife and did
constant battle with cockroaches and ‘other such vermin'. Even the rag rug had been given a beating before she settled for the night. The red circle at its centre might keep out any devils that happened to be looking down the chimney but lack of dust and crumbs was the best deterrent to black beetles.

The two rules of the house were
clean as you go
and
a place for everything and everything in its place.
Even now, excited as she was, Barbara was careful to take her coat upstairs to put it away and she carried the candle guardedly, shielding the flame with the palm of her hand so that it wouldn't splutter and drop wax.

Like most of the cottages in the North End, Becky Bosworth's was a basic two-roomed dwelling with no hall, no kitchen, no bathroom, no running water, no means of cooking other than the open fire and no sanitation. The two rooms were built one on top of the other like a pair of boxes and the stairs were in one corner, closed off by a door at either end and rising in a very steep spiral and complete darkness. So a candle was a necessity. As was a chamber-pot under the double bed to save you having to run out to the privy in the cold. And a stone hot-water bottle for warmth in the winter.