Loe raamatut: «A Valentine for Daisy»

CHAPTER ONE

THE hazy sunshine of a late July afternoon highlighted the steady stream of small children issuing from one of the solid Victorian houses in the quiet road. It was an orderly exit; Mrs Gower-Jones, who owned the nursery school and prided herself upon its genteel reputation, frowned upon noisy children. As their mothers and nannies, driving smart little Fiats, larger Mercedes and Rovers, arrived, the children gathered in the hall, and were released under the eye of whoever was seeing them off the premises.

Today this was a small, rather plump girl whose pale brown hair was pinned back into a plaited knot, a style which did nothing for her looks: too wide a mouth, a small pert nose and a determined chin, the whole redeemed from plainness by a pair of grey eyes fringed with curling mousy lashes. As Mrs Gower-Jones so often complained to the senior of her assistants, the girl had no style although there was no gainsaying the fact that the children liked her; moreover even the most tiresome child could be coaxed by her to obedience.

The last child seen safely into maternal care, the girl closed the door and crossed the wide hall to the first of the rooms on either side of it. There were two girls there, clearing away the results of the children’s activities. They were too young for lessons but they spent their day modelling clay, painting, playing simple games and being read to, and the mess at the end of the afternoon was considerable.

They both looked up as the girl joined them. ‘Thank heaven for Saturday tomorrow!’ exclaimed the older of the girls. ‘Pay day too. Ron’s driving me to Dover this evening; we’re going over to Boulogne to do some shopping.’ She swept an armful of coloured bricks into a plastic bucket. ‘What about you, Mandy?’

The other girl was wiping a small table clean. ‘I’m going down to Bournemouth—six of us—it’ll be a bit of a squeeze in the car but who cares? There’s dancing at the Winter Gardens.’

They both looked at the girl who had just joined them. ‘What about you, Daisy?’

They asked her every Friday, she thought, not really wanting to know, but not wanting to be unfriendly. She said now, as she almost always did, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ and smiled at them, aware that though they liked her they thought her rather dull and pitied her for the lack of excitement in her life. Well, it wasn’t exciting but, as she told herself shortly from time to time, she was perfectly content with it.

It took an hour or more to restore the several play-rooms to the state of perfection required by Mrs Gower-Jones; only then, after she had inspected them, did she hand over their pay packets, reminding them, quite unnecessarily, to be at their posts by half-past eight on Monday morning.

Mandy and the older girl, Joyce, hurried away to catch the minibus which would take them to Old Sarum where they both lived, and Daisy went round the back of the house to the shed where she parked her bike. It was three miles to Wilton from Salisbury and main road all the way; she didn’t much like the journey, though, for the traffic was always heavy, especially at this time of the year with the tourist season not yet over even though the schools had returned. She cycled down the quiet road and presently circled the roundabout and joined the stream of homegoing traffic, thinking of the weekend ahead of her. She went over the various duties awaiting her without self-pity; she had shouldered them cheerfully several years earlier when her father had died and her mother, cosseted all her married life, had been completely lost, unable to cope with the bills, income tax and household expenses with which he had always dealt. Daisy had watched her mother become more and more depressed and muddled and finally she had taken over, dealing tidily with the household finances and shielding her mother from business worries.

In this she had been considerably helped by her young sister. Pamela was still at school, fifteen years old, clever and bent on making a name for herself but understanding that her mother had led a sheltered life which made it impossible for her to stand on her own two feet. She knew that it was hard luck on Daisy, although they never discussed it, but she had the good sense to see that there was nothing much to be done about it. Daisy was a darling but she had never had a boyfriend and it had to be faced—she had no looks to speak of. Pamela, determined to get as many A levels as possible, go to college and take up the scientific career she had decided upon, none the less intended to marry someone rich who would solve all their problems. She had no doubts about this since she was a very pretty girl and knew exactly what she wanted from life.

Daisy wove her careful way through the fast-flowing traffic, past the emerging tourists from Wilton House, and turned left at the centre of the crossroads in the middle of the little town. Her father had worked in the offices of the Wilton estate and she had been born and lived all her life in the small cottage, the end one of a row backing the high walls surrounding the park, on the edge of the town. She wheeled her bike through the gate beside the house, parked it in the shed in the back garden and went indoors.

Her mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, stringing beans. She was small like Daisy, her hair still only faintly streaked with grey, her pretty face marred by a worried frown.

‘Darling, it’s lamb chops for supper but I forgot to buy them…’

Daisy dropped a kiss on her parent’s cheek. ‘I’ll go for them now, Mother, while you make the tea. Pam will lay the table when she gets in.’

She went back to the shed and got out her bike and cycled back to the crossroads again. The butcher was halfway down the row of shops on the other side but as she reached the traffic-lights they turned red and she put a foot down, impatient to get across. The traffic was heavy now and the light was tantalisingly slow. A car drew up beside her and she turned to look at it. A dark grey Rolls-Royce. She eyed it appreciatively, starting at the back and allowing her eyes to roam to its bonnet until she became aware of the driver watching her.

She stared back, feeling for some reason foolish, frowning a little at the thin smile on his handsome face. He appeared to be a big man, his hair as dark as his heavy-lidded eyes…it was a pity that the lights changed then and the big car had slid silently away before she was back in the saddle, leaving her with the feeling that something important to her had just happened. ‘Ridiculous,’ she said so loudly that a passer-by on the pavement looked at her oddly.

Pamela was home when she got back and together they set about preparing their supper before sitting down in the pleasant little sitting-room to drink the tea Mrs Pelham had made.

‘Been a nice day; have you enjoyed it?’ asked Pamela, gobbling biscuits.

‘It’s not been too bad. The new children seem all right. I’ve got four this term—that makes fifteen. Two of the new ones are twins, a girl and a boy, and I suspect that they’re going to be difficult…’

‘I thought Mrs Gower-Jones only took children from suitable families.’ Mrs Pelham smiled across at her daughter.

‘Oh, they’re suitable—their father’s a baronet or something,’ said Daisy vaguely. ‘They’re almost four years old and I think they’ll drive me mad by the end of the term.’

Pamela laughed. ‘And it’s only just begun…’

They talked about something else then and after supper Daisy sat down at the table, doling out the housekeeping money, school bus fares, pocket money, and then she put what was over—and there wasn’t much—into the old biscuit tin on the kitchen mantelpiece. They managed—just—on her wages and her mother’s pension; just for a while after her father’s death they had got into difficulties and her mother had appealed to her for help, and ever since then Daisy sat down every Friday evening, making a point of asking her mother’s advice about the spending of their income. Mrs Pelham always told her to do whatever was best, but all the same Daisy always asked. She loved her mother dearly, realising that she had had a sheltered girlhood and marriage and needed to be taken care of—something which she and Pamela did to the best of their ability, although Daisy was aware that within a few years Pamela would leave home for a university and almost certainly she would marry. About her own future Daisy didn’t allow herself to bother overmuch. She had friends, of course, but none of the young men she knew had evinced the slightest desire to fall in love with her and, studying her ordinary face in her dressing-table mirror, she wasn’t surprised. It was a pity she had no chance to train for something; her job was pleasant enough, not well paid but near her home and there were holidays when she could catch up on household chores and see to the garden.

She was a sensible girl, not given to discontent, although she dreamed of meeting a man who would fall in love with her, marry her and take over the small burdens of her life. He would need to have money, of course, and a pleasant house with a large garden where the children would be able to play. It was a dream she didn’t allow herself to dwell upon too often.

The weekend went far too quickly as it always did. She took her mother shopping and stopped for coffee in the little town while Pam stayed at home studying, and after lunch Daisy went into the quite big garden and grubbed up weeds, hindered by Razor the family cat, a dignified middle-aged beast who was as devoted to them all as they were to him. On Sunday they went to church and, since it was a sultry day, spent the rest of the day in the garden.

Daisy left home first on Monday morning; Mrs Gower-Jones liked her assistants to be ready and waiting when the first of the children arrived at half-past eight, which meant that Daisy had to leave home an hour earlier than that. The sultriness had given way to thundery rain and the roads were wet and slippery. She was rounding the corner by Wilton House when she skidded and a car braked to a sudden halt inches from her back wheel.

She put a foot to the ground to balance herself and looked over her shoulder. It was the Rolls-Royce, and the same man was driving it; in other circumstances she would have been delighted to see him again, for she had thought of him several times during the weekend, but now her feelings towards him were anything but friendly.

‘You are driving much too fast,’ she told him severely. ‘You might have killed me.’

‘Thirty miles an hour,’ he told her unsmilingly, ‘and you appear alive to me.’ His rather cool gaze flickered over her plastic mac with its unbecoming hood framing her ordinary features. She chose to ignore it.

‘Well, drive more carefully in future,’ she advised him in the voice she used to quell the more recalcitrant of the children at Mrs Gower-Jones’s.

She didn’t wait for his answer but got on her bike and set off once more, and when the big car slid gently past her she didn’t look at its driver, although she was sorely tempted to do so.

She was the first to arrive and Mrs Gower-Jones was already there, poking her rather sharp nose into the various rooms. As soon as she saw Daisy she started to speak. The play-rooms were a disgrace, she had found several broken crayons on the floor and there were splodges of Play-Doh under one of the tables. ‘And here it is, half-past eight, and all of you late again.’

‘I’m here,’ Daisy reminded her in a matter-of-fact voice, and, since her employer sounded rather more bad-tempered than usual, she added mendaciously, ‘and I passed Mandy and Joyce as I came along the road.’

‘It is a fortunate thing for you girls that I’m a tolerant employer,’ observed Mrs Gower-Jones peevishly. ‘I see that you’ll have to make the place fit to be seen before the children get here.’

She swept away to the nicely appointed room where she interviewed parents and spent a good deal of the day ‘doing the paperwork’, as she called it, but Daisy, going in hurriedly one day over some minor emergency, had been in time to see the Tatler lying open on the desk, and she was of the opinion that the paperwork didn’t amount to much.

The children started to arrive, a thin trickle at first with time to bid a leisurely goodbye to mothers or nannies and later, almost late, barely stopping to bid farewell to their guardians, running into the cloakroom, tossing their small garments and satchels all over the place and bickering with each other. Mondays were never good days, thought Daisy, coaxing a furious small boy to hand over an even smaller girl’s satchel.

The morning began badly and the day got worse. The cook, a local girl who saw to the dinners for the children, didn’t turn up. Instead her mother telephoned to say that she had appendicitis and was to go into hospital at once.

Daisy, patiently superintending the messy pleasures of Play-Doh, was surprised when Mrs Gower-Jones came unexpectedly through the door and demanded her attention.

‘Can you cook, Miss Pelham?’ she wanted to know urgently.

‘Well, yes—nothing fancy, though, Mrs Gower-Jones.’ Daisy removed a lump of dough from a small girl’s hair and returned it to the bowl.

‘Mandy and Joyce say they can’t,’ observed Mrs Gower-Jones, crossly, ‘so it will have to be you. The cook’s had to go to hospital—I must say it’s most inconsiderate of her. The children must have their dinners.’

‘You want me to cook it?’ asked Daisy calmly. ‘But who is to look after the children? I can’t be in two places at once.’

‘I’ll stay with them. For heaven’s sake go along to the kitchen and get started; the daily girl’s there, and she can do the potatoes and so on…’

Daisy reflected that if she were her employer she would very much prefer to cook the dinner than oversee a bunch of rather naughty children, but she didn’t voice her thought, merely handed Mrs Gower-Jones her apron, advised her that the children would need to be cleaned up before their dinners and took herself off to the kitchen.

Marlene, the daily help, was standing by the kitchen table, doing nothing. Daisy wished her good morning, suggested that she might put the kettle on and make a cup of tea and said that she had come to cook the dinner. Marlene, roused from daydreaming, did as she was asked, volunteered to peel the potatoes and the carrots and then observed that the minced meat had just been delivered.

‘Beefburgers,’ said Daisy; mince, offered as such, never went down well—perhaps the beefburgers would. Marlene, brought to life by a mug of tea, saw to the potatoes and carrots and began to collect cutlery ready to lay the tables. Daisy, her small nose in and out of store cupboards, added this and that to the mince, thumped it into shape, rolled it out and cut it into circles with one of Mrs Gower-Jones’s best wine glasses, since there was nothing else handy. She would have liked to do chips but there wasn’t time, so she puréed the potatoes with a generous dollop of butter and glazed the carrots. By half-past twelve she was ready to dish up.

Mrs Gower-Jones took over then, drawing hissing breaths at the nicely browned beefburgers and the mounds of buttery potatoes. ‘And really,’ she protested crossly, ‘there is no need to put parsley on the carrots, Miss Pelham.’

Which was all the thanks Daisy got.

There was a temporary cook the next day, an older woman who spoke little English, and who, in Daisy’s opinion, didn’t look quite clean. She served up fish fingers and chips with tinned peas. Daisy thought that she wasn’t a cook at all but probably all Mrs Gower-Jones could get at a moment’s notice.

When she went into the kitchen the next morning to fetch the children’s mid-morning milk the sight of the woman preparing dinner in a muddle of dirty saucepans, potato peelings and unwashed dishes made her glad that Mrs Gower-Jones’s meanness stipulated that her assistants should bring their own lunches. Unwilling to disparage a fellow worker, all the same she went in search of her employer.

‘The new cook seems to be in a bit of a muddle,’ she ventured. ‘The kitchen…’

‘Attend to your own work,’ commanded Mrs Gower-Jones. ‘She is perfectly capable of attending to hers.’

The children ate their dinner—what Mrs Gower-Jones described as a wholesome stew made from the best ingredients, followed by ice-cream—and Daisy, Mandy and Joyce took it in turns to eat their own sandwiches before arranging the children on their little camp beds for their afternoon nap, a peaceful hour during which they prepared for the hour or so still left before the children were collected. Only it wasn’t peaceful; before the hour was up every child—and there were forty of them—was screaming his or her head off, clasping their small stomachs in pain and being sick into the bargain.

Daisy, rousing Mrs Gower-Jones from the little nap she took after lunch while the children were quiet, didn’t mince her words. ‘All the children are vomiting and worse—something they’ve eaten. They’ll have to go to hospital. I’ll phone…’

She sped away to dial 999 and then to join the hard-pressed Mandy and Joyce. The place was a shambles by now and some of the children looked very ill. They wiped hands and faces and comforted their wailing charges and had no time for Mrs Gower-Jones, who had taken a look and fled with her hands over her mouth, but she appeared again when the first of the ambulances arrived, asserting her authority in a shrinking fashion.

‘I shall have to notify the parents,’ she uttered to no one in particular. ‘Miss Pelham, go to the hospital and let me know immediately how the children are. Mandy, Joyce, you can stay here and clear up.’

It took some time to get all the children away; Daisy, squashed in with the last of them, looked down at herself. She smelt nasty for a start and the state of her overall bore witness to that fact; she felt hot and dirty and very worried. Food poisoning—she had no doubt that was what it was—was no light matter with small children; she remembered the new cook and shuddered.

Casualty was full of screaming children although some of them were too quiet. Daisy, making herself known without fuss, was led away to wash herself and remove the overall and then she was given a plastic apron to take its place. Feeling cleaner, she was handed over to a brisk young woman with an armful of admission slips and asked to name the children. It took quite a while for she stopped to comfort those who weren’t feeling too bad and bawled to her to be taken home. The brisk young woman got a little impatient but Daisy, her kind heart torn by the miserable little white faces, wasn’t to be hurried. The last two children were the twins, no longer difficult but greenish-white and lackadaisical, staring up at her in a manner so unlike their boisterous selves that she had a pang of fear. Disregarding her brisk companion’s demand for their names, she bent over the trolley where they lay one at each end.

‘You’ll be all right very soon,’ she assured them, and took limp little hands in hers. ‘The doctor will come and make you well again…’

Two large hands calmly clasped her waist and lifted her to one side. ‘He’s here now,’ said a voice in her ear and she looked up into the face of the owner of the Rolls-Royce.

Katie and Josh spoke as one. ‘Uncle Valentine, my tummy hurts,’ and Katie went even greener and gave an ominous heave. Daisy, a practical girl, held out her plastic apron and the man beside her said,

‘Ah, sensible as well as sharp-tongued.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Staff Nurse, these two are dehydrated; get a drip up, will you? Dr Sims will see to it. Where’s the child you told me couldn’t stop vomiting? I’ll see him next.’ He patted the twins on their sweaty little heads, advised Daisy in a kindly voice to dispose of her apron as quickly as possible and, accompanied by one of the casualty sisters, went away, to disappear into the ordered chaos.

The brisk young woman showed her where to dump the apron, took a look at her overall and found her another plastic pinny. ‘If I could have their names,’ she said urgently. ‘They called Dr Seymour Uncle Valentine…’

‘Thorley, Katie and Josh, twins, almost four years old,’ Daisy told her. ‘They live along the Wylye valley—Steeple Langford, I believe. If I could see one of the sisters just for a minute perhaps she could let me know if any of the children are causing worry. Mrs Gower-Jones told me to phone her as soon as possible so that she can warn the parents.’

Her companion gave a snort. ‘I should have thought it was Mrs whoever-it-is who should have come here with the children. Still, I’ll see if I can find someone for you.’

A nurse and a young doctor had arrived as they talked and they began to set up the saline drips, no easy task for the twins took exception to this, screaming with rage and kicking and rolling round the trolley.

‘Well, hold them still, will you?’ begged the doctor impatiently. ‘What a pair of little horrors…’

‘Well, they don’t feel well,’ said Daisy with some spirit, ‘and they’re very small.’ She leaned over the trolley, holding the wriggling children to her, talking to them in her quiet voice.

Dr Seymour, coming back to take another look, paused for a moment to admire the length of leg—Daisy had such nice legs, although no one had ever told her so. He said breezily, ‘They need a ball and chain, although I have no doubt they prefer to have this young lady.’ As Daisy resumed a more dignified position, he added, ‘Thanks for your help—my nephew and niece are handfuls, are they not?’ He ignored the young doctor’s stare. ‘You work at the nursery school? You may telephone the headmistress or whatever she is called and assure her that none of the children is in danger. I shall keep in some of the children for the night—Sister will give you their names. Run along now…’

Daisy, mild by nature, went pink. He had spoken to her as though she were one of the children and she gave him a cross look. If she had known how to toss her head she would have tossed it; as it was she said with a dignity which sat ill on her dishevelled appearance, ‘I’m not at all surprised to know that the twins are your nephew and niece, Doctor.’

She gave him a small nod, smiled at the children and walked away; fortunately she didn’t see his wide grin.

She was kept busy for quite some time; first getting a list of the children who would be staying for the night and then phoning Mrs Gower-Jones. That lady was in a cold rage; the nursery school would have to be closed down for the time being at least—her reputation would suffer—‘and you will be out of a job,’ she told Daisy nastily.

Daisy realised that her employer was battling with strong emotions. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said soothingly, ‘but if you would just tell me what you want me to do next. Shall I stay until the children are collected?’

‘Well of course,’ said Mrs Gower-Jones ungratefully, ‘I’ve enough to do here and Mandy and Joyce are still clearing up. I have never seen such a frightful mess; really, I should have thought you girls could have controlled the children.’

A remark which Daisy thought best not to answer.

She phoned her mother then went back to organise the children who would be fetched as soon as their parents had been told. Anxious mothers and nannies began arriving and in the ensuing chaos of handing over the children fit to go home Daisy lost count of time. They all, naturally enough, wanted to see Mrs Gower-Jones, and since she wasn’t there several of them gave vent to their strong feelings, bombarding Daisy with questions and complaints. No matter that they had already had reassuring talks with Sister; they could hardly blame her for their children’s discomfiture, but Daisy, unassuming and polite, was a splendid target for their indignation. She was battling patiently with the last of the mothers, a belligerent lady who appeared to think that Daisy was responsible for the entire unfortunate affair, when Dr Seymour loomed up beside her.

He had been there all the time, going to and fro with his houseman and registrar, making sure that the children were recovering, but Daisy had been too occupied to see him. Now he took the matter smoothly into his own hands.

‘A most unfortunate thing to happen; luckily, none of the children is seriously affected.’ He glanced down at the wan-faced small boy clutching his mother’s hand. ‘This little chap will be fine in a couple of days—Sister has told you what to do, I expect? This young lady is an assistant at the nursery school and is not to be blamed in any way. The matter will be investigated by the proper authorities but it is evident that the cause was either in the cooking or in the food. I suggest that you take the matter up with the principal of the school.’

Daisy, listening to this, reflected that he had a pleasant voice, deep and unhurried and just now with a hint of steel in it. Which might have accounted for the ungracious apology she received before the small boy was borne away.

‘The last one?’ asked the doctor.

‘Yes. Only I’m not sure if I’m supposed to stay—there are the children who are to remain here for the night; their mothers are here but they might want to ask questions—the children’s clothes and so on.’

‘What’s the telephone number of this nursery school?’

She told him, too tired to bother about why he wanted to know. She would have liked to go home but first she would have to go back and get her bike and very likely Mrs Gower-Jones would want a detailed account of what had transpired at the hospital. She yawned, and choked on it as Dr Seymour said from behind her, ‘Mrs Gower-Jones is coming here—she should have been here in the first place. You will go home.’ It was a statement, not a suggestion and he turned on his heel and then paused. ‘How?’

‘I have my bike at the school.’ She hesitated. ‘And my purse and things.’

‘They’ll be there in the morning; you can fetch them. The place will be closed as a nursery school at least for the time being. Did you come like that?’

She frowned. ‘Yes.’

‘I’ll drive you to your home. Come along.’

Daisy, a mild girl, said, ‘No, thank you,’ with something of a snap. But that was a waste of time.

‘Don’t be silly,’ advised Dr Seymour, and he caught her by the arm and marched her briskly out of the hospital and stuffed her into the Rolls while she was still thinking of the dignified reply she wished to make. No girl liked to be told she was silly.

‘Where to?’

‘Wilton.’

‘Where in Wilton?’

‘If you put me down by the market square…’

He sighed. ‘Where in Wilton?’

‘Box Cottage—on the way to Burcombe. But I can easily walk…’