12. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

The chznges in Daisy seem to be affecting the two children who are dependent on her...

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

12. Different From Them

“Mum,” said Isabel when her mother seemed to be less preoccupied with things she, as a child, didn’t understand and wished she did “can I ask you where you bought my school clothes from?”

“Why, dear?” asked Daisy, and she frowned, “I can’t exactly remember, but it will come to me. Let me think about it. Just give me time.”

“It’s just that Honey Bindle says it’s got a mend exactly like her old one needed, because it got torn and her mum gave to the church for its jumble sale because she didnllt know how to repair it…”

“Did she, darling? Did she really?” frowned Daisy, frowning. Where had she bought the wretched clothes? It was a nice, new blazer, she knew that, and the skirt hadn’t been worn much, either She remembered repairing a small rip on the jacket, though, she’d been proud of her work when she’d finished, but where had she been when she bought it? The shop in town where the school suggested they went to buy proper clothes wouldn’t sell something with a rip in it, would it? And if they did, she’d have taken it back, wouldn’t she?

“The vicar sold it to me,” she said, remembering in a flash of ‘inspiration, “he knows we’re not very well off because your father died and he likes to do the Christian thing and help when he can. And his sister, I think it was, gave him the whole lot.”

“And why did she give them to him, mum? He hasn’t got any kids, has he? So what did she think he’d do with them, with a new school uniform in his wardrobe? Pretend he’s a girl and wear if for fancy dress?”

“That’s funny, Issy, the Reverend Pocock in a school skirt! But no, he’s got a sister, I think that’s what he said. And she’s got a lovely girl who goes to Saint Albans Girls school like you do. That’s what he said. And she’s either grown out of it or did something, yes, maybe tore it, and they bought her a new one… isn’t that kind of them, to give it to the vicar… And the skirt, too, I guess it didn’t fit her, but it’s a lovely skirt and just right for you.”

But you might not have noticed, mum, but it’s got a printed name-tag on the waist band and it says Honey Bindle, and she’s in my class at school and if she sees that I’m wearing her old things I won’t hear the end of it! A skirt with her name in it! Most of the girls think I’m from a destitute home as it is!”

“Bindle? Honey Bindle? That’s the vicar’s niece, then. I’ll bet she’s a lovely girl, and bright as a button, isn’t she?”

“I can’t stand the sight of her, mum! She walks along with her nose in the air as if she’s superior to just about everyone else except her band of stuc-up followers, all just as snobby as she is and all think they’re better than me!”

“That’s nice, dear…”

“What do you mean that it’s nice? If it wasn’t for the rest of the girls my life would be unbearable, but as it is most of them are ordinary, like me, and quite nice.”

Isabel glowered at her mother. The woman wasn’t the same person that she’d been as recently as last year. Now she never seemed to really know what was going on, and there was the school blazer. Yes, she’d mended a little rip in it and yes, she’d done a good job of it. But you could still see that it was there. She’d heard there was such a thing as invisible repairing, and her blazer wasn’t exactly invisibly repaired. And then there was Honey’s name tag on her skirt. Why hadn’t her mum done something about it, unstitched it, even cut it out?

“What’s the matter mum?” she asked at length.

Her mother looked at her, then shook her head. “The matter, darling, what do you mean?”

“Well, mum, you seem sort of… oh, I donlt know, different, like you’ve got something on your mind. Is something troubling you, mum?”

“I tell you what, Isabel, Phoebe said she’ll pop in one evening and I’ll talk it over with her,” murmured Daisy, “if your father was here, though, it would be a different matter. Very different indeed because he’d know what to do about things, but he went away and he can’t come back. There’s no way anyone has ever come back from where he’s gone. It’s a one-way staircase and it goes on for ever…”

“I’ve never heard you talk so, what’s the word, sadly before,” muttered Isabel.

“I know what was troubling me,” said Daisy, suddenly brightly. “Those photographs of mine that you took to school with you… I told Phoebe about them and she’d really like to see them because they were of a holiday we cycled together, just the two of us. They’re memories of the good times, darling, you can’t beat memories of the good times when life was… good.”

“Wasn’t there a war on when you took those photos?” asked Isabel, frowning.

“A war? What war? I don’t recall any war.” stammered Daisy, and she stammered because at the back of her mind she knew there had been a war and that her life and Phoebe’s and just about everyone else’s lives had been bound up somehow in it.

The discussion might have gone deeper into what Daisy could or could not recall about the recent past, but Brian came hurtling into the house. He was nine, going on ten, and a live wire at the slowest of times.

“Mum,” he said, his face round with a kind of anguish, “tell the lads out there. They’re getting on to me. They say that we’re the scruffiest house on the street and it would be better if we moved away and lived in a scruffier town than Brumpton!”

Daisy frowned. “that’s awful,” she said, shaking her head, “why are they so horrible?”

“Because we’re different from them, mum,” suggested Isabel, and Brian nodded his head vigorously as if he was about to say the same thing.

“Why?” asked Daisy faintly, “we live in a house, like they do, and all the houses round here are the same, and we wear the same kind of clothes… you go to the same school as them... so how are we different?”

“Just look at our garden, mum, and out curtains that people can see as they walk by. Somehow they hang all wrong, and the lawn needs mowing, it has all summer long… so we’re different to them.”

“Oh dear…” muttered Daisy, then she brightened up, “I’ll ask Phoebe what I could do,” she said, smiling, “when she comes, that is. She’’ll help me! She always has! We’re friends, and that’s what we’ve always been. Now Isabel, those photos of mine?”

“Half a tick! They’re in my satchel,” replied the girl, and she raced up stairs to her room where she kept her school things because, up there, away from mum’s confusion, they’d be safe.

© Peter Rogerson 07.03.23

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