Hazel spent two years at the local technical college, honing her skills. She passed all her tests with flying colours proving, as she pointed out to Daisy, how much better you could master anything if you were interested and had a goal. Although she sometimes threw ‘when I go to Australia’ or similar phrases into the conversation and had initiated a correspondence with her cousin Maureen who was fairly close to her in age, that was as far as her Australian aspirations went. She got a job in the offices of the local paper and though it was not on the journalistic side, she was thrilled to be even so vaguely connected with the world of writers.
Daisy was delighted that Hazel had found work locally and she allowed herself to believe that she had forgotten her earlier ambition to go to Australia. She had taken a pile of clean washing into her daughter’s room and was placing it on the bed when she saw the open book. She knew it was the one that bore the heading on the front in bold letters: Nutmeg’s Journal.
Even as she did it, Daisy felt thoroughly ashamed of herself, but she read quickly through the open page before replacing it.
I have been working in ‘The Advertiser’ offices now for well over a year. It is high time I got on with my life. If I stay much longer, I shall be in such a rut I won’t be able to move. Worse – I could do something utterly stupid and fall in love, end up a dull little housewife and never realize any of my dreams. I haven’t told Mum as she seems to get so uptight when I mention Australia, but I have written to Auntie Violet as well as Maureen and I can go there when I arrive – no problems. I have also applied for an assisted passage. No problems again as I am young and healthy and Mum was actually born there. I shall be sorry to miss Giles’s twenty-first birthday bash, but I am certainly not giving up my £10 passage for that! I guess the time has come to break the news to Mum.
This should have prepared Daisy when Hazel broke the news to her, but she dropped into one of the hard chairs at the kitchen table with a thump and stared at her daughter.
‘Just say that again, Hazel, I don’t think I quite understood. Giles’s birthday is only a few weeks away. Of course you will be here.’ She pushed away the cup of tea Hazel had thoughtfully put in front of her in the hope that it would cushion the shock of her announcement that she would not be here for her brother’s twenty-first birthday party.
Determined that one of them at least, and preferably her, would remain calm and in control of the situation, Hazel sat down on her side of the table, picked up her own cup and sipped slowly before explaining.
‘No, I shan’t be here, I’m afraid. I have been notified that I have a passage on a ship sailing for Australia just a week before his birthday.’
‘Well, you will have to change it.’
Hazel shook her head. ‘I can’t do that. I’ve waited ages for this. It would be another age before I got another chance – if I did.’ She reached out and helped herself to a cookie. ‘Mmm, these are nice, Mum. Did you make them this morning?’
‘What do you mean, you have a passage to Australia?’ Daisy resisted a sudden desire to throw her cup of tea across the table at her maddening daughter. ‘How could you afford it?’
‘Assisted passage. It is only going to cost me ten pounds. I’m not quite sure whether Australia wants me, or if the British government is pleased to get rid of me, but what I do know is that I only have to cough up ten pounds. Think of it, Mum. Ten pounds to take me to the other side of the world. A month long cruise for the price of a train ticket to – oh, I don’t know – somewhere in the British Isles, anyway.’
‘It sounds good, almost too good to be true. I am sure there must be a catch in it somewhere.’
‘Mum, you really are the wettest wet blanket in the world. Couldn’t you just say, “How absolutely marvellous and how sensible of you to take advantage of such an offer”? Well, of course there is a downside; there is to everything, as you always point out. Recipients of this assisted passage scheme are expected to stay two years at least. What they really want is people like me – young, healthy, qualified – to settle there and boost the population.’
‘Two years. You mean you won’t be home for at least two years. We shan’t see you for all that time. Oh, Hazel, I shall miss you.’ Daisy’s voice broke as she realized just how much she would miss her daughter.
‘You could always come out to see me, Mum.’ Hazel sounded wistful. She too knew she would miss her mother. ‘Aunt Violet would love to have you. You know she would.’
Privately, Daisy wasn’t entirely sure of that, but she knew Hazel was right; she could go out to Australia, if she really wanted to. Technically, she was still an Australian citizen.
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner?’ she demanded. Daisy was shocked, hurt and not a little angry when she realized how little time there was left before Hazel sailed.
‘Because you would have done everything you could to talk me out of it.’
Daisy, admitting that she probably would have done, guessed Hazel might have been more than a little afraid she might succeed.
The next three weeks rushed by in a frenzy of shopping, packing and emotional farewells. By the time she and Giles drove Hazel to Southampton, Daisy felt wrung out. As she waved frantically to the speck on deck that she presumed was her daughter before the great liner finally moved out of her berth, she felt the tears she had managed to keep out of sight welling in her eyes so that all she could see was a mist.
‘Oh, I do hope she will be all right.’ Her voice was choked and Giles caught her arm as she stumbled against him when they turned to go home.
‘Course she will, Mum, Hazel is tough. She will be absolutely fine.’
‘But that cabin, so many of them having to share. I hope they are – well, nice girls.’
Giles kept the thought to himself that they probably were not, at least not by his mother’s standards.
‘She is a grown woman now, you know.’
‘I suppose so.’ Daisy sounded doubtful, wondering just how old was ‘grown’ in a mother’s eyes. She doubted if she had ever achieved that status in her own mother’s mind.
‘We must think about your twenty-first party,’ she told Giles as they drove home. She was making a supreme effort to think of something positive, but she found herself adding wistfully, ‘Such a pity Hazel won’t be here for it.’
‘Yes, I am sorry too that she won’t be here.’ He wondered if this was the right time to tell her. A sideways glance at her preoccupied expression suggested it was not. Perhaps at dinner. They had barely arrived home when there was a phone call for Giles, inviting him to join a group of friends for a pub meal. He was on the point of refusing, but Daisy, guessing from the half of the conversation she could hear that it was an invitation, mouthed to him that he should accept.
‘You go, dear. I am very tired. I shall have a snack and an early night. Plenty of time to discuss your party.’
Giles smiled at her and forbore to tell her that it wasn’t exactly the party he wanted to talk to her about.