Avalanche of Daisies (46 page)

‘Don't give up heart,' Sis advised, still cuddling her. ‘Missing could mean any number a' things. Try not to think the worst, eh.'

‘I can't think of anything. Thass like a nightmare.'

‘I know,' Sis said, her round face wrinkled with concern. ‘I know.'

Christine was preoccupied, fidgeting from foot to foot, gazing down the street. ‘I hope Mr Craxton's OK,' she said. ‘It isn't like him to be late.'

Barbara didn't care if he was. He was the least of her worries that evening. But the others said they were sure he'd turn up and the two Union men declared that they'd never known him miss a meeting. Ever. Regular as clockwork he was. But there was still no sign of him when their bus arrived.

‘What are we to do?' Christine asked, as it juddered to a halt beside them. ‘Are we to go without him or what?'

‘We'll go on ahead,' Sis decided, shepherding her into the bus. ‘No point in all of us being late. He'll follow on.'

But at that moment she saw a woman running down the street towards them, calling to her, a short stout woman with bottle-blonde hair. ‘Mrs Tamworth! Cecily Tamworth!' And she turned, with one foot on the pavement and the other on the platform and waited for her.

‘I'm so glad I caught you,' the woman said,
breathlessly. ‘It's Mr Craxton. Oh dear! I don't know how to tell you this. I'm his niece, Joan. I'm afraid he can't come. He's ill.'

They were all alarmed. ‘How ill?' Sis said. ‘What is it?'

The answer was a shock. ‘He's had a heart attack. He's in hospital.'

They stood where they were, some on the pavement, some on the platform, staring at her. ‘Is he very bad?' Sis asked.

‘Well he ain't going to die, if that's what you mean, not according to the doctor, but he won't be standin' for Parliament, that's for sure. He's got to take things easy. They ain't even sure about the shop.'

The conductor had walked down the bus to see what was causing the hold-up. ‘You gettin' on or off, lady?' he said to Sis.

‘Off,' Sis told him. ‘We'll catch the next one.' And she and the committee returned to the pavement so that they could give their full attention to Mr Craxton's niece.

‘Came on all of a sudden,' she told them. ‘We thought it was indigestion. Mrs C gave him Rennies.'

‘I'm
so
sorry,' Sis said.

And Christine asked, ‘How is he now?'

‘Not good. They got to watch him for twenty-four hours in case he has another one.'

They were still questioning and commiserating when the next bus came round the bend.

‘We'd better go now,' Sis said. ‘Thanks for lettin' us know. Give him our love. Tell him not to worry. An' say I'll come up an' see him tomorrow.'

‘My word!' Christine said, when they were all on the bus and settled into their seats. ‘Poor Mr Craxton! Who'd have thought it? What will they do at Bellington South?'

What indeed? To be without a candidate with the election so close was, as Pauline said she hardly needed
to point out, ‘a real blow'. She looked round at their concerned faces, as they sipped coffee from her elegant bone china and spread their files and papers across her elegant polished table. ‘It's a bombshell,' she said. ‘Here I've been thinking we were going to plan our first public meeting in years – he wrote to me about it only last week and we thought what a good idea it was – and now this.'

‘What are we to do?' the schoolteacher asked.

‘Oh dear, Brian,' Pauline said. ‘I really don't know.'

‘You'll have to choose someone else,' Sis told her.

‘Choosing was the problem in the first place,' Pauline said. ‘We thought and thought, you know, and there's absolutely nobody. It's a big commitment and we're all such
busy
people. The Coome Mertons would be the ideal people, naturally, but they've always got so many business matters to attend to – they send their apologies, incidentally.'

The librarian stirred his coffee and hastened to assure them all that he'd be only too glad to offer his services, ‘but working the hours I do, I'd really be too much of a liability. You need someone absolutely reliable.' The old man in spats excused himself on the grounds that he was really a little too long in the tooth. The teacher admitted, modestly, that he was good at public speaking but doubted whether he could carry off a parliamentary candidature. ‘If push comes to shove, I'll weigh in but I'd rather you found someone else.'

In her present fragile state, Barbara was irritated by the way they were taking the news. Not a word about poor old Mr Craxton, she thought, and what a lily-livered lot they are. Whass the matter with them? I bet they'd stand quick enough if they thought there was any chance of getting elected. The longer the excuses went on, the more irritated she became. In the end she was stung to speak.

‘I tell you what I think,' she said, at a pause in their catalogue of excuses.

They turned polite faces towards her.

‘You're lookin' for someone with commitment. Thass right, hain't it?' It was. They were agreed on that. ‘A good public speaker.' Oh yes, that was essential. ‘Someone who knows the facts an' can put them across.' Indeed. ‘Strong socialist. Fighter. Good personality.'

‘You are describing the ideal candidate, my dear,' the spatted gentleman said, smiling at her paternally. ‘Would we could find him.'

‘That hain't a him,' Barbara told him, ‘thass a her. You got the ideal candidate sittin' right here in this room. She don't miss a trick. There hain't a thing she don't know about this area. She got files an' folders on every subject under the sun. If any on us wants information, she's the one we go to.' She looked round at her fellow committee members, who'd worked out who she was talking about and were grinning at her and nodding. ‘Hain't that right? Well then, I'd like to propose Mrs Cecily Tamworth. Any seconders?'

The proposal caused such a stir that for a second she was afraid she'd gone too far, too soon. But then all five members of her committee raised their hands in support and Sis laughed out loud and thwacked her on the shoulder. The spatted gentleman was nodding, the teacher looked perky, the librarian was clapping his hands, and Pauline, who'd been startled at first, changed her mind when she saw what a positive reaction she was getting.

‘Would you consider it, Mrs Tamworth?' she asked.

‘If you're sure you know what you're letting yourselves in for,' Sis said, ‘and on mature consideration, yes I would.'

After that, the meeting became quite light-hearted. And very busy. Sis showed them all the material she'd been gathering about the planned National Health Service and outlined the sort of thing she'd like to see in their local literature, ‘providing I'm accepted by the
party'. By the time they parted company late in the evening, they'd organised another local meeting, planned their public meeting, designed leaflets to advertise both of them, and costed the entire enterprise.

‘An inspired proposal,' Pauline said to Barbara as they parted. ‘I wish the Coome Mertons had been here to see it.'

Sis chuckled about it all the way home, puffing a cigar and wheezing with smoke and delight.

‘You're a case,' she said to Barbara, as they parted at the top of Childeric Road. ‘I never thought you'd spring something like that on me.'

‘I wouldn't have done if I hadn't been worried about Steve. I just couldn't sit there an' hear them makin' all those silly excuses an' him …'

Sis grew serious at once. ‘No good telling you not to worry,' she said. ‘I know that. But, like I said, don't face the worst until you have to. Missin' don't always mean dead. Keep your pecker up.'

Barbara kissed her goodbye and said she'd try but she knew it would be impossible. Just the thought of going back into the house where his parents would be sitting up worrying was making her heart drop into the pit again. But in fact, as she discovered when she got in, both her in-laws were in bed and she had the place to herself.

She crept away into Steve's bedroom, and eased into his bed, lying on her side with her head on his pillow, looking at the three neat lines of his books in the moonlight, remembering him. It had been a terrible day and an extraordinary evening and she was very, very tired. But she couldn't sleep.

After a couple of hours, she gave up trying and sat up and switched on the light. She was desperate for someone to talk to, someone who would listen and understand what she was saying, someone who spoke her language. Sis was a dear but she was too caught up in her politics, Mr Wilkins was grieving as much as she
was herself and so was Mrs Wilkins, to give her credit. But as she sat there, with her arms round her knees, listening to the sounds of the sleeping house – somebody snoring downstairs, bedsprings creaking, timbers shrinking and cracking the way they used to do in Lynn – she suddenly remembered her aunt Becky. That was it! She'd write a letter to Aunt Becky. At one remove, it would be possible to say everything she wanted to. Aunt Becky could take it.

It was another hour before the letter was written but then she slept at last, and the next morning, although she was very tired, she felt she was able to cope. Breakfast was horribly difficult because they were all in such a state but they got through it, somehow or other, and then there was the bustle of clearing the table and washing the dishes, and then at last she could leave them and go to work. It was a relief to be on her own again and another to post her letter.

Becky Bosworth was setting off to the baker's when the letter arrived but when she'd read it, she decided the bread could wait and walked straight round to Maudie's place to tell her the news, her sharp face dark with distress.

Maudie was standing on her doorstep gossiping with Vera Castlemain.

‘He done marvellous up in Lunnon,' Vera was bragging. ‘He got hisself a new job. Did I tell you? With a di'mond merchant. Imagine that. 'Course I always knew he'd get on. Even as a little lad. He was so brainy. Well you remember how brainy he was. Never thought he'd get a job with a di'mond merchant, though. Never in a thousand years. You think of the money he'll make.'

Maudie was very impressed. ‘Always knew he'd do well,' she said. ‘Thass a great pity he didn't marry our Barbara, if you ask me. They'd ha' made a good pair. When he cornin' up to see you then?'

‘Not yet awhile,' Vera admitted. ‘He say he got to stay on guard. Every evenin' he say. 'Course with di'monds I s'pose they got to watch out for thieves. Stand to reason.'

Becky breezed into their conversation and pushed it to a halt. ‘You seen this, have you?' she said to Maudie. ‘You heard the news?'

Maudie took the letter and read it slowly, at first with interest and then with growing distress. ‘Oh my dear heart alive!' she said. ‘My poor Bar'bra. That hain't fair! What a thing to go an' happen!'

‘Shall you go up an' see her then?' Becky asked.

‘That ol' boat's a-comin' in,' Maudie said, frowning to be caught between two needs. ‘Aspected this marnin'. Don't want him hollerin'. He ain't axactly in the best of moods. Leastways he weren't when he set off. Reckon I'll write to her.'

Vera was looking puzzled. ‘Whass goin' on?' she asked, her round face perplexed. ‘Who you gonna write to?'

‘Becky'll tell you,' Maudie said. ‘Hassen you up an' get home or you'll hev the boat come in an' you won't be ready.' She turned to Becky, holding up the letter. ‘Can I keep this fer a day or two, while I'm writing?'

‘Long as you like,' Becky told her.

So the letter was kept and answered – at length and ungrammatically but with more affection than she'd shown her poor daughter for a very long time.

And the next morning Barbara had two letters from Lynn. There was nothing else, and she
had
so hoped there would be, but she encouraged herself that two letters from Lynn would do to be going on with. And they
were
a comfort, Becky's so sensible and her mother's so loving.

I know I was not keen on you getting married but I would not have had this happen for the world. Your pa dont know on account of he is at sea at
present. I have not told your brothers on account of they are too young. I do so hope you get better news soon which you will write and let me know wont you. I shall be thinking of you all the time.

If only she could have written to me like that when I got married, Barbara thought bitterly, instead of all that hollering. It's dreadful that I got to lose my husband before my ma will write to me properly. But then she checked herself. Missing hain't dead. Don't face the worst until you have to. And she offered up one of her quick, heartfelt prayers to make amends for her black thoughts, ‘Please God, don't let him be dead. I'll write back to Ma this afternoon and I'll be really nice to her, and I'll be really nice to Mrs Wilkins too, only please don't let him be dead.'

‘This is beginning to stink,' Steve whispered, holding his nose and grimacing.

‘Speak fer yerself,' Dusty whispered. ‘We all stink.'

Which was true. After two days without washing, their hands and faces were seamed with grime, their chins covered with an ugly uneven stubble and they smelt like tramps, filthy-sour as though they were rotting.

But Steve was referring to the situation they were in, which was steadily becoming more and more bizarre. They'd been travelling about the German countryside for more than forty-eight hours now, and in a most peculiar way, using minor roads and farm tracks and doubling back on themselves whenever there was any other traffic in the area. Their food stocks were low, there was hardly any water, they were down to their last two cans of petrol, and their captor was hideously bad-tempered but he still showed no sign of handing them over to anyone else.