The Daisy Club (39 page)

‘Your turn!' Clive said, in a gently teasing voice.

‘What, again?'

‘Aurelia – you were asleep!'

Aurelia stared up at Clive, and then around her. The room was empty, and she could hear laughter and talk from the cottage dining room, and the piano being played by Guy.

‘Oh good gracious, how terrible!'

Clive pulled her to her feet.

‘Not terrible at all. But we none of us felt inclined to wake you.' He smiled. Seeing her fall into a well-deserved slumber, the other guests had crept out, leaving Clive to watch over her. ‘Come and dance. There's dancing next door!'

Aurelia looked up at him. Perhaps because she was still sleepy Clive seemed to have changed. He looked not just very ‘Clive' but startlingly handsome.

‘What are you staring at?'

Aurelia shook out her hair.

‘I never realised before that you were so handsome, that's all,' she said, laughingly, as she smoothed her evening skirt down. ‘Guy gave me this, you know,' she went on. ‘It was left over from a production of
The Marriage Mart
. Gloria Martine, playing Lola Margritte, refused to wear it. He said it's usually hats with actresses, so it was in that sense an unusual refusal, but I daresay you know all that?'

Clive took her hand.

‘No,' he said, in a firm tone. ‘The only thing I know at this minute is that I want to dance with you before Christmas Day is over.'

‘Are we about to melt into each other's arms, do you think?' Aurelia asked, as he pulled her out of the sitting room and into the dining room, where the rest of the party had pushed the furniture against the wall, and were waltzing happily, blackout curtains drawn, candles lit.

‘Not only shall we melt into each other's arms, we have a very good chance of staying there,' Clive told her.

‘Surprise!'

Daisy stared around her at all the familiar and unfamiliar faces. She stood stock still, not moving, and as she did so she imagined running up to each person in the room and hugging every single one of them – Mr and Mrs Budgeon, the Lindsay boys, Freddie and Branscombe, Dan Short – flinging her arms around all of them. But of course she couldn't, but only because she knew it would have embarrassed Aunt Maude. Instead she went up to her only living relative and kissed her briefly on the cheek, and that was before turning back to the others. As she did so, a wave of almost overwhelming grief washed over her, leaving her speechless, as she realised in one single awful moment just how many Twistleton friends were missing.

Jessica and Blossom, Jean, Laura – not Aurelia of course, she was spending Christmas with Guy Athlone – Joe Huggett, he was gone, and two from The Cottages who had been in bomb disposal. She thought of Jessica at the Court, and what the Court looked like now, and then she shook her head – now was not the time to remember – and smiled and laughed instead, and, bending down, greeted the mad assortment of dogs that had accumulated in her long absence.

‘Bless you! You have given me the shock of my life!'

‘We wanted to surprise you,' Maude said, with quiet satisfaction.

‘And you certainly succeeded!'

It had been Maude's idea to give her a party. She knew she would have to do something to help them both get over the embarrassment of their reunion, but didn't know quite how to do it. Then Freddie, perhaps guessing that there would surely be an awkwardness, suggested putting on a surprise party, which, as it turned out, had been ideal.

‘I'll have to run and change!' Daisy looked down at her uniform.

‘No, don't, you look wonderful—' Freddie exclaimed, putting a hand on Daisy's arm.

‘I must change,' she insisted.

‘Very well, shake a leg, but be back in five seconds,' Freddie commanded.

Back once again, Daisy looked as beautiful as ever, but a great deal more the thing, her long blonde hair caught up into a topknot of velvet ribbon. Her slender figure was admirably suited to the pre-war long silk dress that Maude had donated to her, long ago.

Freddie, too, looked admirable, despite having to carry Ted around on her hip, because he couldn't be left in his playpen very long without putting up a fuss.

‘I'll take him,' Daisy said, hands reaching out.

‘I thought you didn't like babies?'

‘As a matter of fact, this is the first one I've tried!'

Daisy took Ted, gleaming with health and Christmas clothes made by Freddie and Maude from heaven only knew what – and heaven only did know – all found, as always, in the attic. His bottom half was made out of an old dressing gown, his top half out of an old nightdress, but he looked as smart as new paint.

Daisy, tired from driving and, well, the war, put Ted down after a few minutes, and as Maude started to play the piano, instead of carrying him she began to dance up and down with the toddler, as they all sang ‘Away in a Manger' to Aunt Maude's playing.

‘This little baby has a crib for his bed,' Daisy told him. ‘This little baby is a very lucky Ted, isn't he?'

She looked round at the variety of people singing, and thought how much jollier it was that they were all there under one roof, all singing hymns to Aunt Maude's playing, no one feeling awkward, all the coldness of the old house quite gone.

Freddie, too, looked round, and with justifiable pride. The three Lindsay boys were grouped around Aunt Maude's piano, all singing lustily, and nearly in tune. Their once-wan faces had changed so much in the passing months, and that despite all the shortages. The fresh country air had given them the colour of autumn apples, and their dark heads of hair neatly cut by Freddie into nice shapes – no pudding-basin cuts for them – showed up their newly handsome looks. White shirts, and home-made bow ties, old-fashioned Edwardian jackets – once belonging to Aunt Maude's brothers, but now altered to fit the Lindsays – showed off their strengthening physiques. Looking at them, Freddie thought with sudden pride that if the Lindsays had been three young horses that they had all brought on, she could not have been more proud.

‘Time to put on the hay bags!' Branscombe announced, following which they all poured, chattering and laughing, down to the kitchens below, where there were so many cooking pots bubbling, and there was so much going on in the old ovens, that the fact that most of the food was not what it once would have been, even a year before, was quite forgotten in the warmth of the moment.

‘Will you have to go back quite soon?'

It was almost like the old days, with Freddie and Daisy sitting up in a flat above the stables, only, this flat was at the Hall, not the Court, and they were each nursing a gin, which they would never have done before the war, and there was no notice declaring that only members of the Daisy Club were admitted.

‘Yes, tomorrow, I am afraid. I must go back and carry on. The war may be being won on the factory floor, but it is also being won
from
the factory floor!' Daisy joked.

Freddie looked crestfallen.

‘Oh, I had hoped that you would be able to be with us a little longer.'

This statement amused Daisy, because it now seemed to her that their roles were reversed, and that where once Daisy had been the daughter of the Hall, now Freddie seemed to have taken her place, in every way.

‘You are coping so well here, it seems that really, in essence, the village has become the Hall,' she said, changing the subject in an attempt to cheer Freddie up.

Freddie gave a weak smile. Coping! She would hardly call what she did ‘coping' – struggling, perhaps, but not coping.

‘Everyone is pulling together,' she conceded, after a second. ‘But we all miss you terribly, Daisy. We pray for your safety every night. Specially Aunt Maude, she misses you so much. She is so different now you are back, smiling unexpectedly, and laughing, which she hardly ever does, or has done. And I miss you, and the Daisy Club, so much, really I do. It would be so nice if you could come back more often, but you can't: what you are doing is vital.'

Daisy sipped her gin, realising from what Freddie had just said that Freddie must be very lonely. More than lonely, if she was missing Daisy so very much. Freddie's war was very different from Daisy's war. Freddie had to cope with all the various people now clustered, one way or another, under the roof at the Hall, and yet, at close of play, she had no one with whom she could go to the pub and have some fun.

Daisy might be flying planes, she might be delivering them to airfields which on one day would seem to be seething with young pilots, and the next completely deserted – if there had been a lash-up – but at least she was with people her own age.

Freddie, when not rushed off her feet, nursing under very trying conditions, or looking after Ted, was really quite friendless, particularly now Jean was gone.

But it was Freddie's turn to change the subject.

‘The Huggetts won't acknowledge Ted, you know.'

Daisy stared.

‘Why ever not?'

‘Because, you know – Jean. Well, Jean was from The Cottages.'

‘Snooty?'

‘“Snooty is as snooty does” is what Branscombe says.'

‘I hate snobbery, do you know that?' Daisy stated with sudden passion. ‘Preference is fine, we all have our likes and dislikes, but snobbery is so cruel, and has nothing to do with good manners. Snobbery makes me feel quite sick. I was thinking the other day that if there was one thing about the war, it does seem to have brought everyone together, and done away with petty attitudes.'

‘I think it has. I see that on the wards, everyone helping everyone else. Yes, war has brought us together, everyone not caring who or where someone is from, not minding in the least, only wanting what is best – except for people like the Huggetts!'

‘Perhaps they don't know about Ted? Perhaps no one has told them about Jean and Ted?'

‘Oh, they know, all right. Your aunt wrote to them several times. Wrote to them about the christening. Wrote to them about how many teeth he had, what he was getting for Christmas, all that kind of thing, but not a word back. She is furious, you know, as well she should be. Abandoning a grandchild like that is inconceivable, most especially since he is Joe's only child, his son.'

Daisy knocked back her gin, and then lit her cigarette.

‘Anyone heard anything from Laura, do you know?'

Freddie shook her head sadly.

‘Nothing. And we're not allowed to know either, although Aurelia wrote to me in heavy-handed code that “a friend of our mutual acquaintance is at this time missing, believed to be abroad”.'

‘Laura was a FANY. FANYs don't go abroad, they stay at home ferrying officers about in military motor cars and getting taken out to The Four Hundred.'

‘Not all of them, Daisy.'

‘Damn, damn, damn. I suppose – oh God, I suppose she has only gone and volunteered for something madly dangerous?'

Freddie looked away.

‘She'll be back soon, I expect. We all hope – back soon, don't let's trouble trouble, eh? I know the last time I saw her at the Daisy Club, at your flat, she was looking pretty determined, pretty whiz-bang, a bit of a Catherine wheel look about her.'

Daisy looked away, guilt now pouring over her like molten lead, like boiling oil, blistering her very soul.

The following morning, making sure this time to kiss everyone firmly on the cheek, she set off after a breakfast composed mostly, it seemed to her, of fried eggy bread, and chicory coffee.

‘Don't wave, don't wave!'

Waving goodbye was now said to be bad luck, just as kissing people, if only before they went to the shops, had become routine.

Maude and Branscombe, with baby Ted on his leading reins, did not wave her off, but watched Daisy, manoeuvring the car as fast as possible down the grassy, bumpy path that had once been the drive, until the moment that she disappeared from sight.

‘I only hope that she doesn't drive the whole way at that speed. If she does she'll have run out of petrol before she reaches Wychford,' Branscombe remarked, as they all three, baby Ted leading the way, turned to go back into the house.

Maude nodded. Branscombe was right. She pushed the hall door open. She sighed, and sighed again. Suddenly feeling tired, because she was all too aware now that every time she said goodbye to Daisy she did, as the song said, die a little. It was her age. Or it was memories. Something. But the truth was with each ‘goodbye' a little of her went away, never to come back.

Sensing Miss Maude's mood, the dark cloud hovering above her – at which he was now getting quite adept – Branscombe turned to the mistress of the Hall.

‘Can I leave Ted with you, Miss Maude? Got to get on with my carrots and turnips, and all that. His playpen's in the library, and I lit the fire.' As Maude looked at him, shocked at this, he nodded in agreement. ‘I know, I know, shocking stuff. But I found an old door at the back of the shed that leads to Fallow Field, you know the one? And I chopped it up. A bit of cheer before New Year.' He stopped. ‘A bit of cheer before New Year? I am a poet, though I didn't know it . . .'

Maude smiled, and followed him into the library. Dear thing, he always thought he was being so subtle, but really he was about as subtle as a dog with his head under the table that had forgotten that his tail was sticking out!

Branscombe went down to the kitchen and started to cook, and as he did so he listened to the wireless. His old wireless from the old days, from Twistleton Court. Somehow that wireless meant the world to him, taking him back to the days before the war.

He missed Miss Jessica and Miss Blossom, every day. They were always at the back of his mind, but just now he really had to get to grips with pushing carrots through the mincer, a job and a half at the best of times.