7. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Daisy starts earning a wage and Isabel gets a boyfriend

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

7. A Teenage Proposal

With Christmas looming on the horizon and Isabel becoming eleven in a matter of days Daisy was only too well aware that her modest pension income simply wasn’t enough to cater for two still young children at an expensive time of year. After all, presents had to be bought and even the books that Isabel had said she wanted cost money. She would never be able to afford the post office set complete with rubber stamps that the girl so badly insisted that she wanted, and even the price of a handful of Enid Blyton books amounted to a small but frightening amount and were definitely a more worthy buy to Daisy’s mind. At least reading fed the mind.

And the tablets prescribed by the doctor had helped her no end. She was sleeping until the alarm clock woke her, and when she forgot to wind it once or twice Brian woke her himself instead. That boy seemed to have a built-in alarm clock all of his own and Daisy wished she had one too.

Then, out of the lue, she heard that a local school was looking for a woman to help supervise school meals, and it was a job that paid a wage for a single mother in need of fewer hours away from home. It wasn’t at the school her children attended but at one a little further away in the opposite direction, on the Swanspottle road out of Brumpton, and she still had the bicycle that she and Phoebe had gone holidaying together with before the war. She could ride that to her job. She had plenty of energy these days, thanks to the tablets she was on.

The cook at Ryfield school where she started working was a plump and rather jolly lady about the same age as Daisy, fifty or there about, not old by any stretch of the imagination but after a difficult life in which she had worked as a nurse in one of the hospitals that had sprung up to cope with war-wounded personnel, no longer young. She was Josie Palfrey and the two women instantly liked each other.

One day Daisy was helping dispose of unwanted mashed potato and a lot of gravy by scraping aluminium serving containers into a waste bucket. It seemed so wrong that food should be wasted, and she mentioned this to Josie afterwards.

“That it is Daisy my dear,” agreed Josie Palfrey, “a wicked waste. We cook what we’re supposed to for the kids, and sometimes there’s just too much and I’ve never worked out why. Farmer McKinnock takes it for his pigs, which is why they get so fat! Though it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t help himself to a few bites of it, looking st his waistline!”

“Don’t you ever get tempted, you know, to take the odd bit home with you, Josie, I mean, it’s too good for pigs.”

“I would, but risk getting caught, and that would cost me my job, and I don‘t want to lose that. But, Daisy, the truth is I do sometimes slip a bit of pie in my bag because I know how good the stuff is I it! But don’t you mention it to anyone!”

“I won’t,” promised Daisy.

“And if you were to slip a slice of this or that into your bag I’ll not notice,” grinned Josie, “but be careful. That headmistress has got eyes everywhere and she’s always had it in for us in the kitchen!She reckons we should work longer hours even though I start before she does every day!”

The first consequence of this new job was she was able to afford more of the things she felt she ought to buy that Christmas, and once or twice she took the advice of Josie and secretly wrapped the odd piece of pie when it was on the menu, and slipped it into her handbag. Not only was she able to feed her children more cheaply but her income was swollen on pay day. She could save more for Christmas, which work at Ryfield School, with the sounds of children practising seasonal carols and rehearsing for a nativity play a constant reminder of the approach of the festive season.

But it was the approach of Isabel’s birthday that bought her a first surprise.

They were sitting in the front room, the three of them, and listening to the wireless which was tuned into the Light Programme and a comedy show, when the door was knocked.

“See who it is, Bri?” ordered Isabel.

“Okay,” he responded even though she was expecting him to tell her to do it herself.

When he returned he had a cheeky grin on his face.

“Well?” asked Daisy, hoping it wasn’t anyone important enough to make her miss the rest of the programme.

“It’s for you, Issy,” he said, choking back a laugh, “his name’s Ricky and I told him to wait in the kitchen.”

Her face suddenly became clouded by a mixture of surprise and anger. “You told him to wait in the kitchen?” she said, “why did you do that?”

“He sai you were his girlfriend…” began Brian, but Daisy interrupted.

“Girlfriend?” she snapped, “you’re only ten, for goodness sake, child and girls of ten don‘t have girlfriends!”

“I’ll be eleven the day after tomorrow, and anyway he only thinks he is, mum,” stammered a red-faced Isabel, “but I could call him something else. He’s a nuisance, that’s what he is, reckons we’re old enough to go out together, and I told him we’re not.

“Really?” Daisy was at a loss for words, then, “how old does he say he is?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s fifteen though he surely doesn’t looka nything like that old, but I know that’s true because it was his birthday a week or so ago and he had a card from his mum saying happy fifteenth birthday, and he showed me in the playground. He’s got a job at Smart’s in town, you know, the paper shop, behind the counter selling stuff in the shop and generally sorting out the stock in the back room, nd making tea and stuff for mr Smart.”

“And he wants to go out with a child?” almost exploded Daisy, “at his age he’s a man working at a man’s job for a man’s wage! And you’re not even eleven yet! He needs to be locked up!”

Someone not in the room pushed the door open, and Ricky Shepherd stood there, looking as if he might be on the verge of crying.

He might have had his fifteenth birthday, he might be leaving school in a day or two and starting on a work of working for his living, but to Daisy’s eyes he looked not much older than Isabel herself did.

“Who are you?” asked Daisy, her voice still troubled.

“This is Ricky Shepherd, the man who wants to go out with me,” announced Isabel.

Man, thought Daisy, shocked and frowning, he can’t be much older than ten! His balls won’t have dropped yet! Though she didn’t say any of that. The last thing she wanted to do was mention what the males of the species kept in their pants, and that she knew the odd thing about them.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs Parfitt,” squeaked Ricky, “I’m your Issy’s friend and I want to marry her…”

Oh dearie me, passed through Daisy’s brain as she stared at the boy standing awkwardly by the door, he wants to marry my little girl, my Isabel...

© Peter Rogerson 01.03.23

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