Where Bluebells Chime - Elizabeth Elgin

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Dada?’ Daisy switched on the light.

      ‘Best not, sweetheart. Wait till your mam gets back.’

      Since tea was rationed six months ago, the caddy on the mantelshelf was strictly under Alice’s supervision.

      ‘Dada?’ Daisy sat down in the chair opposite. ‘There’s something –’ She stopped, biting on the words.

      ‘Aye, lass?’ Her father did not shift his gaze from the empty fireplace and it gave her the chance she needed to call a halt to what she had been about to say.

      ‘I – well, I know it’s stupid to ask, but can you tell me,’ she rushed on blindly, warming to her words, ‘what will happen to my money if the Germans invade us? Will I get it?’

      ‘Well, if you wait another year till you’re one-and-twenty, you’ll know, won’t you? Not long to go now, so I wouldn’t worry over much. But if you really want my opinion, that inheritance of yours is going to be the least of our worries if the Germans do get here. So let’s wait and see, shall us?’

      Daisy’s inheritance. Money held in trust by solicitors in Winchester. Only a year to go and then it would be hers to claim, Tom brooded – if the Germans didn’t come, that was; if all of them lived another year.

      ‘Silly of me to ask.’ And silly to have almost blurted out what she had done yesterday, during her dinner hour. ‘You’re right, Dada. Either way now, it doesn’t matter.’

      And it didn’t, when Drew was in the Navy and Keth was in Kentucky not able to get home, and people having to sleep in air-raid shelters and already such terrible losses by all the armed forces. When you thought about that, Daisy Dwerryhouse’s fortune was immoral, almost.

      It came as a relief to hear the opening of the back door and her mother calling, ‘Only me …’

      Then Mam, opening the kitchen door, hanging her coat on the peg behind it, patting her hair as she always did, popping a kiss on the top of Dada’s head like always.

      ‘Sorry I’m late, but I’d the offer of the use of a grand tea urn for the canteen. And talking of tea, set the tray, Daisy, there’s a love.’

      She sat down in her chair, pulling off her shoes, wiggling her toes.

      Then, as she put on her slippers Daisy said, ‘Mam, Dada, before we do anything – please – there’s something I’ve got to tell you …’

       2

      ‘Tell us?’ Tom gazed into the empty fireplace, puffing on his pipe, reluctant to look at his daughter. ‘Important, is it?’ Which was a daft thing to ask when the tingling behind his nose told him it was. Loving his only child as he did, he knew her like the back of his own right hand.

      ‘Anything to do with the shop?’ Alice frowned.

      ‘Yes – and no. I don’t like working there, you know.’

      ‘But whyever not, lass?’ Tom shifted his eyes to the agitated face. ‘You’ve just had a rise without even asking for it.’

      ‘Never mind the rise – it’s still awful.’ Daisy looked down at her hands.

      ‘Oh, come now! Morris and Page is a lovely shop, and the assistants well-spoken and obliging. All the best people go there and it’s beautiful inside.’ Twice since her daughter went to work there, curiosity got the better of Alice and she had ventured in, treading carefully on the thick carpet, sniffing in the scent of opulence. She bought a tablet of lavender soap on the first occasion and a remnant of blue silk on the second. Paid far too much for both she’d reckoned, but the extravagance had been worth it if only to see what a nice place Daisy worked in.

      ‘I’ll grant you that, Mam. The shop is very nice, but once you are in the counting house where I work, there are no carpets – only lino on the floor. And we are crowded into one room with not enough windows in it. And as for those ladylike assistants – well, they’ve got Yorkshire accents like most folk. A lot of them put the posh on because it’s expected of them. And obliging? Well, they get commission on what they sell and they need it, too, because their wages are worse than mine!’

      ‘So what’s been happening? Something me and your dada wouldn’t like, is it?’

      ‘Something happened, Mam, but nothing that need worry anyone but me. Yesterday morning, if you must know. There was this customer came to the outside office, complaining that we’d overcharged her. She gets things on credit, then pays at the end of the month when the accounts are sent out. Anyway, yesterday morning she said she hadn’t had half the things on her bill, so I had to sort it out. She was really snotty; treated me like dirt when I showed her the sales dockets with her signature on them.’

      ‘But accounts are nothing to do with you, love. You’re a typist.’

      ‘I know, Mam, but the girl who should have seen to it is having time off because her young man is on leave from the Army, so there was only me to do it.’

      ‘So you told this customer where to get off, eh?’ Tom knew that flash-fire temper; knew it because she had inherited it from him.

      ‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I just glared back at her and she said I was stupid and she’d write to the manager about me, the stuck-up bitch!’

      ‘Now there’s no need for language!’ Alice snapped. ‘But if you didn’t answer back nor lose your temper, what’s all the fuss about?’

      ‘Oh, I did lose my temper, but I didn’t let that one see it. When she’d slammed off, I realized it was my dinner break, so I got out as fast as I could. She got me mad when there are so many awful things happening and all she could find to worry about was her pesky account!’

      ‘But you cooled down a bit in your dinner break?’

      ‘Well, that’s just it, you see.’ Daisy swallowed hard. No getting away from it, now. ‘I ate my sandwiches on a bench in the bus station, then I walked into the Labour Exchange and asked them for a form. And I filled it in. I’m changing my job. I’m not kowtowing any longer to the likes of that woman.’

      ‘And would you mind telling your mam and me just what that form you filled in was all about?’ The tingling behind Tom’s nose was still there. That little madam standing defiant on the hearth rug had done something stupid, he knew it. ‘You’re not going to work on munitions, are you?’

      ‘Oh, Daisy! Not munitions? Mary Strong went on munitions in the last war and went as yellow as saffron!’

      ‘Nothing like that, Mam, and anyway, they’ll probably not take me. You’ve got to have an uncle who’s a peer of the realm and a godfather who’s an admiral and your mam’s got to have danced with the Prince of Wales when she was a deb – or so they say.’

      ‘So what was it about?’

      ‘About the Navy. Drew has joined and I’m joining, too, if they’ll take me. The women’s navy, that is. The Wrens.’

      ‘You – are – what?’

      ‘I’m joining up.’

      ‘Oh, but you’re not! We could be invaded at any time! Just what do you think me and Mam would do if you were miles and miles away? You’ve got to stay here, safe at home!’

      ‘No! Drew is miles and miles away. Drew’s at Devonport – so what’s so special about me?’ Daisy challenged.

      ‘The fact that you’re still not of age, for one thing, and I don’t remember giving my permission for you to join anything,’ Tom flung, suddenly triumphant.

      ‘Oh but you did, Dada. Your signature was on the bottom of the form. I wrote it there for you!’

      ‘Why, you – you –’ His face

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