want to try for the WAAF now, pet? You’ve no idea where he is or even if he’s alive.’
The words struck Daisy like a slap and she almost reeled back. ‘What a dreadful thing to say. ’Course he’s alive but … but he’s busy and …’ Daisy stopped. In a moment she would be crying and if she started she felt that she might never stop. No word from Adair, but there had been no word from Sam or Ron or Phil either.
‘We have to face facts, pet. We’re all worried. Your friend is a pilot. They flew over Dunkirk helping to keep the stranded lads safe. Planes ditched, Daisy, and some got shot down.’
‘You have to tell Mum. I’m going to try. None of them’s dead and when Adair – if Adair – needs me or wants to teach me, he’ll find me easy enough.’
Fred shook his head sadly but turned and left the shop. Daisy sat down and listened to his steps on the stairs.
That night Rose persuaded Daisy to go dancing with her and some friends from the munitions factory. It was a chance for Daisy to wear an emerald-green rayon dress that Flora had altered for summer wear but which would not be out of place on the dance floor Apart from its attractive heart-shaped neckline with the yellow edging, it was spangled with white flowers, which Flora had crocheted on winter evenings. Daisy did try to enter into the spirit of the evening but she was aware that, apart from herself, everyone on the floor was actively involved in war work. She dismissed her time spent fire-watching and the hours she spent in the first-aid classes – it was not real work. Her father could talk as much as he liked about the necessity for honest shopkeepers in this time of trouble.
It’s too easy, she said to herself. Apart from the few deliveries you make – and those will come to a halt if the rumours about petrol rationing are true – you don’t even have to go out in the rain. Time to come to a decision.
Seeing her sister and her friends a happy part of the throng on the dance floor, Daisy slipped out. No doubt Rose would think she had found a partner in another part of the hall. The lads from Vickers were good lads and would see all the girls home safely and so she need not worry about her sister. Stan, who often partnered Rose at dances, was a favourite with all the Petries.
Daisy hurried home through streets strangelyunfamiliar, the lights dimmed or non-existent. Here and there, people scurried about their business as unobtrusively as possible, and no cheery greetings rang out on the still summer air. She was relieved to see the front of the shop loom up before her and slowed her pace in case her parents were still awake. They would be sure to ask why she had had to hurry and why she was alone. She stopped at the shop window to make sure she had her key to the side door. Her little change purse with the key inside was deep down in her coat pocket and, as she stood fishing it out, she heard a strange sound coming from the alley that ran along the side of the shop.
Daisy, suddenly reminded of her father’s constant warnings to her and to her sister about ‘wandering home alone late at night’, froze to the spot and listened more intensely.
Scuffling and rustling and occasional hushed voices.
Someone, obviously up to no good, was at the side door to the family flat. What was she to do? Her parents, if they were awake, were on the other side of the building. Even if she were to break the shop window – and how she could manage that she had no idea – it was probable that Fred would not hear it. And what if she smashed an expensive window only to discover that a courting couple were sheltering in a doorway?
Come on, Daisy Petrie, there’s a war on, and you keep moaning about wanting to do something meaningful and the first chance you get – you do nothing. Holding her breath, she listened again. Was that a crackling noise? What made crackling noises? Fire.
Daisy raced round the corner.
A tea crate was on fire. Two shapes – boys, she thought – were manoeuvring the crate against the wooden door, not of the flat but of the lockup across the alleyway.
‘Hey, stop!’ she shouted.
The boys stopped – for a split second.
‘Give ’er one, Jake,’ yelled the bigger one. ‘The door’s catching perfect.’
Jake was obviously afraid to hit Daisy, who shook her head in mixed sorrow and anger. She knew these lads. Were they not always in the group who needed anything that was being sold at a discount? A quick glance told her that they had tried and failed to force the door open. Silly boys. Inside the lockup stood the shop van. Did they want to steal it?
She tried to scare them off. ‘ARP warden’ll be round here in a jiff, you two – with a policeman, I shouldn’t wonder – and you two’ll be in Borstal afore you—’
She had no time to tell them what they would have no time to do as the older and larger of the boys, furious both with Daisy for interfering and Jake for not ‘giving her one’ threw himself at Daisy, knocking her to the ground. The last thing she heard was, ‘Oh Gawd, our George, you’ve killed her.’
Daisy woke several hours later with a splitting headache and an immediate irresistible urge to be very, very sick. The next fifteen minutes were too hideously uncomfortable for her to worry about modesty, which was just as well as she found urgent unknown hands stripping her of her nightgown and the same hands, surprisingly competent, washing her.
‘Well, and won’t you be after feeling a lot better now,’ a soft Irish voice said. ‘And such a pretty frock you were wearing too, Irish green; must say, I’m surprised to see a frock like that in a brawl.’
A brawl. Daisy tried to sit up but fell back again as the pain exploded once more in her head.
‘Am I dead?’ she heard her voice say.
‘Sure, you are not, but with a bump the size of the egg on the back of your skull, I don’t doubt you wish you were. There now, that’s the second time I’ve cleaned you up in less than an hour so will you be a good girl and keep your head and your stomach quiet while I take care of someone else.’
Daisy stayed quite still; she could not have moved had she wanted to, for the nurse, if the Irish woman was a nurse, had tucked starched white sheets tightly around her.
‘Good, macushla, now I’ll be letting your mammy in for five minutes and then I want you asleep.’
Daisy lay, aware of nothing but enveloping pain, and then a voice she knew and a touch she welcomed.
‘Daisy, Daisy, my dearest girl, you could have been killed by those boys. Lucky for you that Rose and Stan was there.’
Rose and Stan; boys, what boys? Daisy closed her eyes and, her hand tightly clasped by her mother, drifted off to sleep.
She woke much later in a narrow hospital bed in what she later discovered was a women’s ward in the County Hospital. ‘You sustained a nasty crack on your skull, Miss Petrie.’ A doctor was taking her pulse and looking down at her with clear, sympathetic eyes. ‘Seemingly you’re quite a little heroine, preventing those young vandals from setting fire to a garage door. Could have been quite nasty. A policeman was here earlier to speak to you but we’ll let you get over your unpleasant experience before we allow that.’
‘My parents?’
‘Will be here at the regular visiting time. Now, tell the nurse if you feel like eating. The porridge isn’t bad.’ And he was off.
Daisy
