Daisychain Summer

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Helen had stooped, taking a handful of Holdenby earth.

Goodbye, Anne Lavinia Sutton …

Once the train had come to a standstill, Alice laid Daisy on the seat, reaching for her cases, placing them one by one on the station platform. Then she scooped up her daughter.

‘We’re here in London and oh, it’s such a place you’d never believe it, Daisy Dwerryhouse!’

Carefully she stepped down, and then she saw them. Julia did not move nor take Alice into her arms, kiss her, say how glad she was to see her. Instead, her eyes spoke for her.

I’m sorry, they said. I know it shouldn’t have been this way, but try to understand?

A small boy held her hand. He was sturdy and he was fair. His hair was carefully parted and looked as if it had recently been combed. He hopped from one foot to the other, excited by the noise and bustle.

‘I had to bring him,’ Julia whispered. ‘I promised I would, next time I went on a train. And you’ve got to come to terms with the way it was.’ She held out her arms for Daisy. ‘Let me have her – show her to him?’

Bemused, Alice did as she asked, running her tongue round lips gone suddenly dry.

‘Drew, darling,’ Julia said softly, ‘this is my dearest friend, Mrs Dwerryhouse and this –’ she bent low so the small boy might see the child she held, ‘– is baby Daisy. Say hullo.’

‘Hullo, baby,’ he repeated obediently, then gazing up, he held out a small, gloved hand and whispered, ‘Hullo, lady.’

Alice looked down at her son; at the child of rape she had wanted never to love, and saw only a small boy, not yet two years old; saw Julia’s son.

‘Hullo, Drew,’ she said softly, bending down, cupping the small face in her hands. ‘You are so like Giles, except that you have Andrew’s eyes …’

The child pursed his mouth, frowning. Giles and Andrew were words he did not know and Mrs Dwerryhouse was a word too difficult to say. So instead he smiled brightly, pointing to the engine that still hissed steam and puffed coal smoke.

‘Puffing train,’ he said.

‘Nice puffing train,’ Alice nodded, kissing Julia warmly. ‘It’s all right, love. You’ve done well. He’s grown into a fine little boy.’

‘Let’s get a taxi.’ Julia closed her eyes briefly, relieved that the meeting of mother and son had gone better than she had dared hope, holding up a hand to call a porter. ‘Soon be at Montepelier Mews. Sparrow knew where to lay hands on a pram and cot.’

‘Sparrow? I’d forgotten …’

‘But she’s been looking after Andrew’s place for me – you knew that. I sent her the key to Aunt’s house – asked her to light fires, air the beds. She’s there, now.’ Emily Smith, who had cleaned for Andrew and devotedly washed and ironed his shirts. His cockney sparrow, he’d called her. ‘I send her wages each month – surely you remember? She still talks about Andrew as if he’ll soon walk through the door, back from Bart’s, and asking how her rheumatics are. It’s as if she wiped the war from her mind. Bless you for coming, Alice. It’s going to make going back to Little Britain so much easier.’

‘Do you have to go back?’ Come to think of it, did she have to keep up the lease on Andrew’s lodgings, act like Sparrow who tried not to admit he would never come home?

‘Yes, I do, but I’ll tell you about it when we get to Aunt’s house.’

‘Yours now, don’t forget.’

‘Not quite. Almost, though. Still a few things to be seen to before it’s legally mine. And I haven’t been in Hyde Park, yet. I was waiting for you …’

‘Then we’ll take the children there, tomorrow,’ Alice said firmly. What was Julia up to? Why the urgency of this visit? She offered her hand to Drew. ‘Come along, Drew. Take lady’s hand.’

Her eyes smiled into Julia’s. It’s all right, they said. At least my problem is solved – now let’s get you sorted out, Julia MacMalcolm!

Aunt Sutton’s little mews house behind Montpelier Place had changed little, Alice thought, since she had stayed there that enchanted May, seven years ago. Then, she had been maid and chaperon to Julia Sutton, her employer’s daughter, and never had she had such a time! It had been in nearby Hyde Park that Julia and Andrew met and –

‘Sparrow! Here they are! Here are Mrs Dwerryhouse and Daisy.’

Alice shook her head, blinking away the past, smiling at the small, thin woman who bobbed a curtsey then said, ‘Oh, the little love,’ to Daisy, who was, for once, wide awake and gazing about her with blue-eyed alertness.

‘Hullo. Am I to call you Sparrow, too?’ Alice hesitated.

‘Bless your life, mum, everybody else does! It was the doctor gived me the name and if it’s good enough for him, then who’s to say different? The kettle’s on the boil, Mrs MacMalcolm. You’ll both be wanting a drink of tea?’

Alice looked around her, remembering. The house was still pretty and white; white windows and doors, outside; white-painted woodwork inside, with white-painted furniture in a style popular at the turn of the century and Anne Lavinia Sutton had not thought to change. The house was full of greenery, then. Pots of ferns and trailing plants everywhere, though now there were none to be seen. Died from neglect, she supposed. ‘The plants?’ she ventured.

‘Mm. I shall have to buy more. I want it to be just as it was when Aunt lived here. Sparrow will see to them. She’s coming to live in, caretake the place – did I tell you?’

‘You didn’t – but it’s time for Daisy to be fed. Can I go upstairs?’

‘That you can, mum,’ Sparrow smiled. ‘The cot is made up and a warmer in it. And there’s a comfy chair for you to sit in. Anything you want, just call out. Sparrow’s here to take care of you all.’

‘She’s so pleased to be moving in here,’ Julia murmured as she watched Daisy feeding contentedly. ‘She’s a widow; her son was killed in the war, too. She’s only got the pound I send her each month for keeping an eye on 53A, and a few shillings a week pension. Hadn’t much to live on, when her rent had been paid. She’ll be a lot better off, when she lives here. Paradise, she says it will be.’

‘And will she still look after Andrew’s lodgings?’

‘No. I – I’m going to let the place go. The lease expires at the end of the year. I won’t renew it.’

‘I see. I think you’ll be doing the right thing, though it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?’

‘It’ll hurt like hell – as if I’m betraying him. That’s why I want you with me. I’m not brave enough to do it alone. You were with me the night Andrew and I met. You are a part of us. I want you to be there when I say goodbye.’

‘And I will be, though it won’t be goodbye, Julia. Just an acceptance that he’s gone. It won’t be easy. I didn’t want to let Tom go. And where is Drew?’ she demanded, eager to talk about other things.

‘Drew’s fine. He’s in the kitchen with Sparrow. He always finds someone to fuss over him. At Rowangarth he’s got Cook wrapped round his little finger – now it’s Sparrow. They’ve both got one thing in common – a cake tin filled with iced cherry buns.’ Julia was smiling again. ‘You do like him, Alice? Seeing him didn’t upset you, like it used to – bring it all back?’

‘No. I’m Alice Dwerryhouse, now. Drew is your little boy. And nothing that happened was his fault; I accept that, now. How is the adoption going?’ she murmured.

‘We-e-ll – I’ve been going to tell you about that. After a lot of thought – mostly by Carver-the-young – I think it won’t be so much an adoption as a change of legal guardian. Young Carver says it’s all that’s necessary and won’t be half so much fuss. Things are a bit behind, because of Aunt Sutton, but we’ll keep you au fait with everything. You aren’t going to change your mind?’

‘You know I won’t. Drew belongs at Rowangarth – it’s as simple as that. And one day, when they are older, we’ll tell them, won’t we?’

‘You and me both, Alice. One day …’

They took the motor bus to Newgate Street, walked up King Edward Street, then they were there, in Little Britain; in the street where Andrew’s lodgings stood beside a shop that sold stationery and newspapers, a few yards from the gates of St Bartholomew’s church.

53A, Little Britain. Julia looked at the windows, clean and shining, and the curtains; exactly the same curtains as when he had lived there.

‘It isn’t much of a street, is it?’ Alice had need to break the bleak, brooding silence.

‘No, but it was near the hospital and it was all he could afford. He was saving hard, you know, to buy his own practice. I told him I’d have money when I was twenty-one, but it made no difference, the stubborn man …’

‘I remember the day you first came here. Oh, but you had me worried, Julia. There was I, supposed to be looking after you, see you came to no harm, and there you were, insisting on going out alone – and to a man’s lodgings, an’ all!’