‘It’s up to me how I deal with me own flesh an’ blood.’ His voice was deceptively low as the hard black eyes met hers again. ‘An’ I don’t give a monkey’s cuss what you think.’
‘Her baby is Tom’s bairn an’ that makes it my flesh an’ blood.’
She heard his teeth grind and the woman behind him say, ‘
Jacob!
Please, Jacob, don’t lose your temper, not on the doorstep. You know the cuddy lugs next door’s got on her.’
‘You tell that little--’ He stopped abruptly, his teeth clamping together. ‘You tell her to get her backside home if she knows what’s good for her.’
Daisy looked into the furious red face, her gaze taking in the woman standing behind her husband too, before she said dully, ‘She’s not comin’ home.’ And she was fully aware of the irony of the situation as she spoke. She had come here intending to plead and beg for Margery to be allowed home, and now the girl’s da was all for it and Daisy herself was refusing. But it was the right thing to do. She had never been so sure of anything in her life. Margery’s da was going to put her away, most likely have her committed into the workhouse where she would have to remain for fourteen years until the child was old enough to leave.
Daisy had never set foot in the workhouse but she had heard enough horror stories about it to know what it would mean to a young lass like Margery. It wasn’t the rigid routines and discipline that were unbearable so much as the more subtle deprivations and degradations that made the workhouse inmates lose all their dignity, like the inmates of prisons and lunatic asylums. Margery’s bairn would be taken away from her to live with the other children in a separate section of the workhouse. The unmarried mothers, or ‘unchaste women’ as they were labelled, were excluded from the small privileges sometimes extended to the other inmates, who mostly consisted of the old, the sick, the handicapped and inmates’ children, prisoners of a harsh system which showed no mercy.
The thought of Tom’s bairn being sent to school in the workhouse uniform when it was old enough, of its being taunted and jeered at by other bairns who were probably less well fed and well clothed but who had proper homes, wasn’t to be borne. Daisy thought back to the fights at her old school between the workhouse children and the other bairns, and it was enough for her voice to take on a note of authority as she said, ‘Margery will never be comin’ home, that’s what I came to tell you. She’s stayin’ with us. It’s what me brother would have wanted.’
‘Oh, aye?’ Margery’s father was visibly quivering with rage. ‘An’ your lot are goin’ to clothe her an’ her bastard for the rest of their days, are you? Well, more fool you!’
‘Goodbye, Mr Travis. I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure meetin’ you but it hasn’t.’ Daisy steeled herself to turn and walk away with her back straight and her head up, but once round the corner and out of sight of Margery’s parents she leant back against a house wall, her heart pounding. Horrible man! And the look in his eyes when she had turned and left. If looks could kill she’d be six foot under right now. The next moment she nearly jumped out of her skin as a hand caught her elbow and a man’s voice spoke her name.
‘George?’ The relief she felt on seeing her eldest brother after the unpleasantness she’d just gone through and the fright she’d had almost made Daisy forget herself and fling her arms round his neck in the street. Instead she composed herself and said quietly, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘
What am I doin’ here?
’ George Appleby was a placid, easygoing kind of man like his father had been, so it said much about his state of mind that he shook his sister hard as he repeated, ‘What am
I
doin’ here?’
‘Stop it, George. Get off!’ Daisy kicked out in true sisterly fashion, her boot connecting with George’s shinbone. She glared at him as she said crossly, ‘What’s the matter with you anyway? I thought you were all out on the boats today?’
‘We were. A good haul brought me home early. But never mind that. Did he hurt you?’
‘Hurt me? Who?’
George shut his eyes for a moment, beseeching patience under his breath. ‘Who do you think? Tom’s lass’s da.’ He didn’t add that he had felt his heart jump into his mouth when he had seen Daisy looking like death as she’d leant against the wall. ‘An’ what the hell made you come here by yerself anyway? Are you daft? Is that it?’
‘No, I am not daft.’ She would kick him again in a minute if he carried on. ‘But you all left too early for me to say about Margery comin’ an’ it needed sortin’ out. Anyway, I only wanted to talk to her da. That’s not a crime.’
‘Talk to him!’ George shook his head. ‘By, lass, you’re fair mental, you are straight. The man threw his own daughter out last night an’ was probably spoilin’ for a fight, then you turn up on his doorstep. I couldn’t believe it when I called in an’ Gran put us in the picture. He might’ve knocked you into next weekend.’
‘Aye, well, I didn’t get hurt.’ Daisy didn’t add here that it was because exactly the same thought had occurred to her that she had made sure she visited Margery’s parents before any of her brothers found out about Tom’s lass and went to see the Travises. It hadn’t seemed likely that a bit lass would inflame Margery’s da like the sight of a fisherman on his doorstep would, although as it happened she didn’t think he could have been much madder. ‘But I can tell you now there is no way he’s havin’ Margery back without doin’ away with her in the workhouse or somethin’. He made that perfectly clear. An’ she’s carryin’ Tom’s bairn, George, for right or wrong.’
‘Aye, aye, I know that, lass.’ By, did he know it. Tilly and the bairns and his grandmother were hanging like a lead weight round his neck, and now there was this other lass Tom had been messing about with. Where was it going to end? He didn’t know about Margery ending up in the workhouse - they’d all be knocking on its door at this rate. It hadn’t taken long for word to reach old Jefferson that two of his cottages were minus their breadwinner, although George hadn’t let on to Daisy and Tilly and the rest of them about the visit he’d had from one of Jefferson’s lackeys. Out by the end of the week, and that was being very reasonable, the man had said. Some landlords who weren’t as considerate as Mr Jefferson would have made sure folk were evicted the same day.
It had been an uphill trudge leaning against the wind to the Travises’ house, but such was Daisy’s despondency on the way home that the walk seemed even longer. What were they going to do? How would they all manage? It was all very well for her to say Margery wasn’t going back to her mam and da, but the reality was that they were going to have to be out of the cottage soon. She knew that and she also knew poor George was worried sick. But Tom’s bairn being brought up in the workhouse? It couldn’t be, she wouldn’t let that happen, and she just knew Margery’s da had that in mind. There had to be a way out of this.
Later that night, curled up under the blankets as she tried to get warm, Daisy knew she had only been putting off the decision that had been made the night before. She had listened to the other girl cry herself to sleep earlier, and had known then she had to go and see Alf in the morning. She would tell him she still felt the same, she couldn’t lie about it, but that she would marry him if he could see his way clear to Margery and her bairn living with them along with her granny. She would still follow through on her plan to get a job and bring in some money although now it would have to stretch further. They could scrape through, they would have to - that was if Alf agreed to her conditions. But he would.
Daisy twisted restlessly in the bed, drawing her icy cold feet into her hands to warm them as she bent her knees. She had given her stone water bottle to Margery, and she was missing it.
Could she do it? Could she let Alf touch her and lie with her and do the things married couples did? She wasn’t very sure about what happened in that realm, but she had heard enough talk among the women when they were all gutting fish or collecting mussels and such to know that some of them liked what went on and some didn’t. The only information her granny had proferred on the subject, when she had talked to Daisy the day she had started her monthlies, was that the love a woman felt for her husband made her want to please him.
Daisy shut her eyes tight, her stomach churning. She wished, oh, she did so wish that the shipwreck had never happened. She wished she had never seen William Fraser because things would have been so much easier then. Her da and brothers would still have been lost of course, and Margery would still have turned up on their doorstep, but she could have married Alf not knowing . . .
The thought brought her eyes wide open in the darkness. Not knowing what? And then she answered herself immediately with, How you could feel when someone just looked at you, or how touching someone’s flesh - even when they didn’t really know you were there - could create little shivers in your stomach, or how a stranger could suddenly become so important.
Stop it
. It was a command to herself, and if she had spoken it out loud her voice would have been harsh. William Fraser was gone, he had never been part of her life and never would be. He was as far removed from her as the man in the moon.
She turned over on her stomach, putting her hands over her ears as though she could block out her thoughts that way. This would pass. She had often listened to the other lasses oohing and ahhing over some lad or other, and the next week they would be on to someone else. And she had more important things to worry about.
Oh, she missed her da. She missed him so much, and their Tom. Even now she still expected the door to open and them to walk in. How they’d all get through Tom’s funeral in two days time she didn’t know, and then they would have to go through it all again and again when - or if - her da and Peter were found.
It was another two hours before Daisy fell into a troubled nightmarish sleep, and even then she was still fighting against the images her subconscious conjured up - dark images, beings that wanted to subjugate and control her, to hold her and enclose her inside themselves.
And they all had Alf’s face.
Chapter Six
The next morning was one of early sea mist followed by bright sunshine, the sort of day that spoke of a good summer ahead to the old-timers.
April would soon be bowing out to May and the change in temperature proclaimed this. It was several degrees warmer outside, although it would take more than a morning’s sunshine to persuade the solid stone walls of the cottages to relinquish their damp grip on the occupants. Arthritis, pneumonia, influenza and chest infections produced a natural cull each winter on the old and very young, and the sea wasn’t chary about picking off prime specimens of manhood all the year round.
It was still far too early to start the day when Daisy awoke. She lay listening to the distant pounding of the waves as she mulled everything over for the hundredth time. They probably had a few days’ grace left at the cottage but that was all, and then what? Tilly and her family would be separated and squeezed into her brothers’ cottages, and if Alf agreed to take Margery and her granny she would be beholden to him and his mother for the rest of her life.
At six o’clock Daisy flung back the covers, and by half-past she had breakfast ready. At eight o’clock Hilda Travis knocked on the door.
Daisy stood back a pace and surveyed Margery’s mother as Hilda said nervously, ‘Jacob is on the early shift from today so this is the best time for me to come. He mustn’t know. I . . . I had to see Margery. I’ve brought her things, her clothes an’ bits an’ pieces.’
‘Come in.’ Daisy couldn’t bring herself to smile at the woman, but she kept her voice civil as she said politely, ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea if you’d like a sup?’
‘No - no, ta, I have to get back.’ As Hilda stepped into the living room Daisy saw her quickly glance round, taking things in, but she didn’t walk over to her daughter who was sitting on a chair by the range, and neither did Margery stand up and move towards her mother. The two stared at each other, and then Hilda bent down and deposited the two large cloth bags she had been carrying on the stone flags. ‘Here’s your things,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll be needin’ ’em, won’t you, lass?’
‘Yes.’
‘How . . . are you feelin’?’
‘All right.’
Hilda nodded her head jerkily. And then she turned to face Daisy, her voice low as she said, ‘He . . . he’s got this thing, this mania, about bein’ looked up to, see? But he’s not a bad man. He was all for Margery goin’ to piano lessons an’ such, betterin’ herself. All we ever wanted was for her to make us proud.’
There was silence for a moment, and then Nellie stirred on her platform bed as she spoke up with the privilege of age. ‘Strikes me no one ever asked the lass what she wanted.’