The door opened as they reached it and a cottage loaf of a woman with whiter than white hair, a face criss-crossed with the pattern of a life lived to the full and beaming a welcome greeted them. Daisy’s churlish thoughts melted as she submitted to a warm hug. She even smiled at Rosie’s emotional: ‘Daisy, my little baby!’
‘Not so little and no longer a baby, but yes – still Daisy.’ To her own surprise, she returned the hug.
Inside the house, Rosie stood back and studied Daisy. ‘Oh, but you are so like your mother!’ she exclaimed. Daisy had been told this before but couldn’t see it herself. To her mind, the one like Ella was Hazel.
‘You should see my daughter. Now she really is like her and I suppose would be round about the age Mother was when she came out to Australia and first met up with you,’ said Daisy.
‘And a lucky day that was for me. Fifteen, I was, a scrawny thing. Though you wouldn’t believe that now, sent out to a father who never turned up to meet me, never did turn up, in fact, alive or dead. I would have been in real strife if your mother hadn’t taken me under her wing. I owe a lot to her.’
‘She owed a lot to you too, Rosie,’ Violet cut in. ‘You more than repaid anything Mother ever did for you.’
‘Yes, well….’ Rosie looked flustered recalling how her relationship with their mother had ended. It would be less than tactful to bring that into the conversation.
Daisy was surprised to hear herself say, ‘Violet tells me you and Dad were married,’ and wondered what demon prompted them. She watched a deep flush creep up Rosie’s neck and suffuse her cheeks and felt ashamed of herself. She usually took on the role of peacemaker, smoothing over the gaffes of others whether malicious or accidental.
Rosie squared her shoulders and looked Daisy in the eye. For a moment, they stared at one another like two roosters staring down prior to a scrap, Violet told her afterwards. ‘More like a couple of old hens,’ Daisy had corrected her, a wry smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
‘Yes, Daisy, we were married,’ Rosie was the first to break the silence, ‘and quite happy we were too, most of the time. Neither of us had any great expectations, you see. Bill always said your mother expected too much of him. She was full of romantic notions he couldn’t live up to.’
‘Did you know Mother eventually married the man she jilted to marry my father and come to Australia?’ Violet’s voice rasped as if she were holding back angry thoughts. ‘She only came back here to see me after he died.’
Daisy looked at her sister with a new glimmer of understanding. Was this why she was so angry with their mother? Not because she had landed herself on her for the duration of the war, but for her perceived rejection of her when she married Walter and stayed in England.
‘Oh dear, the lengths the Good Lord had to go to in order to get you two into the world,’ Rosie murmured on a theatrical sigh.
Daisy chuckled at this mental picture of the Heavenly Puppeteer moving her mother across the world like a chess piece just to bring her and her sister into being. She met the twinkle in Rosie’s eye and her preconceived idea that she wasn’t going to like her did a quick somersault; she liked her very much. No wonder her mother had thought so much of her in those first difficult days in Australia.
‘I’m really glad, Rosie, that everything turned out all right for you and that you and … that you were happy.’ With the knowledge of her own parentage in her mind, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say ‘you and my father’.
During this brief exchange, the kettle had come to the boil and broke into the brief silence with a piercing whistle. ‘There’s the kettle,’ Rosie announced unnecessarily. ‘I think a nice cup of tea would go down very well,’ she smiled encouragingly at Daisy, ‘and you can tell me how life has dealt with you since I last saw you.’
Daisy thought that was a bit of a tall order as her entire life had been lived since she and Rosie were last together. ‘How do you do it?’ she asked as she bit into a feather light scone.
‘Do what?’ Rosie was baffled.
‘Make such superb scones. Mine are like golf balls compared with these. I’ve never tasted such good ones.’
‘I don’t suppose you have; your mother had a very heavy hand with scones and pastry. But then she hadn’t been brought up to cook, or do anything that you could say was useful which was why she was so glad to have me along with her when we went up to that farm beyond Bendigo. Now, fill me in with what’s happened in your life, young Daisy.’
Thus challenged, Daisy felt strangely tongue-tied. ‘Well … we all lived with old Mrs Sanders after – well, when Mum was on her own. I had always had a yen to go to England; it was where my parents came from, so I always thought of it as home.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Violet interrupted. ‘I never did. Australia has always been home to me.’
‘Well, Australia was home to me too, but that didn’t stop me wanting to see where I had originated.’ Daisy tried to explain how she had felt.
‘You do talk some tosh, Daisy.’ Violet grimaced with impatience. ‘You were born here the same as me, you were raised here, you went to school here, but all you ever thought about was going to England, “back to England”, you used to say. So silly. You had never been there, so how could you go back?’
‘I probably was silly, full of romantic ideas about “the old country”, but that is how I was and I can’t change what I was then, can I?’ Daisy did her best to suppress her irritation with her sister and turned deliberately towards Rosie. ‘I suppose I was lucky in a way. Not everyone has their dream come true.’
‘Not everyone has such daft dreams,’ Violet muttered half under her breath.
Studiously, Daisy ignored her and Rosie cast her a quelling look.
‘Anyway, I ended up marrying my boss and having two children.’ Daisy decided brevity was the best defence against Violet’s constant interruptions.
Rosie sighed. ‘Sounds just like a Mills and Boon romance, but I suppose there was really much more to it than that.’
‘Well, yes …’ Daisy admitted, ‘that’s just the gist of it.’ She felt like saying that her life with Richard had not been in the least like a romantic novel but chose to talk about her children instead. ‘Giles is married now. That’s why I came back to Australia – for a visit.’ She paused, realizing that that hardly sounded like a legitimate reason and tried to explain. ‘He inherited the house and the business, you see. When he became of age and got married, I felt it was time for me to leave him to it.’
‘You mean your husband left everything to your son, and not you?’ Rosie was shocked.
‘Don’t worry, he was a very rich man, so I am sure he left Daisy well provided for.’ Violet’s voice was tart.
Daisy glared at her, wondering how Violet had come to assume with such certainty that she, Daisy, was rich. She didn’t know how to refute it without sounding pettish, or worse – a total humbug.
Rosie came to her rescue, rolling back the years to talk to Violet as if she were still barely five years old. ‘What her husband left Daisy is none of your business, or mine,’ she snapped. ‘Now, tell me about your mother, what happened to her, and about that daughter of yours. I understand she is a dead ringer of her grandma.’
‘Yes, she is very like her, in every way – looks and character. Hazel loved my mother and got on very well with her as a small child. She wrote to her throughout the war and was looking forward to her coming back.’
Violet gave what sounded like a derisive snort. ‘Did you know,’ she turned accusingly to Daisy, ‘that Hazel dabbles with the tarot cards. She says her grandma Ella gave them to her. I find that hard to believe – Mother messing about with something like that.’
‘Oh, but she did,’ Rosie chortled. ‘I introduced her to them and taught her how to use them. I had an old deck that had belonged to my mother and we whiled away a few hours with them on board that ship. I never let on to your mother, but I made a few bob on the side reading other passengers’ cards for them. Most people on board were pretty uncertain about what was in store for them in the future and I had plenty of takers.’
Daisy laughed cheerfully, to the surprise of Violet who had thought to shock what she thought of as her sister’s prim English soul. ‘So you, Rosie, are the mastermind behind all this. Hazel was turned out of her boarding school for possessing and using a deck of tarot cards, given her, she said, by her grandmother. I found that a bit surprising at the time, but now you have explained it, all is clear, as they say.’
‘You had better teach her how to use them properly.’ Violet meant to sound withering, but both Daisy and Rosie took it seriously.
‘Indeed I must,’ Rosie said and Daisy murmured something in agreement. Violet sniffed. She personally had no use whatsoever for such arrant nonsense.
‘You told me your mother married the man she jilted to come out here with your father,’ Rosie adroitly changed the subject. ‘Now there is a real romantic story for you. Had he waited for her all those years?’
‘Well, not really,’ Daisy admitted. ‘He had married someone else, a widow with a son….’ A shadow crossed her face as she thought of James. Nothing at all romantic there. Twice she had let him go out of her life. ‘But she seemed very happy with him.’
Rosie nodded with satisfaction.
Their reminiscing was brought to an abrupt halt by Violet looking up at the clock on the mantle and announcing that they had better move if they were to catch their train.
Daisy hugged Rosie as they left, surprised to find that she was really sorry to be leaving. She promised to come again and bring Hazel with her. What an odd thing family relationships were, she thought as she settled into a corner seat opposite Violet on the homeward train.