Daisy Tallis sat waiting that afternoon, seeming lost in her thoughts. But as soon as Margaret spoke to her, she jumped to her feet and Margaret saw the eager gleam in the girl’s eyes.
‘Come along, dear.’ She held out her hand, looking forward to spending some time with a child again. ‘I’ve some paper and pencils. Did you ask your father?’
Daisy nodded. As they went into the house, Margaret said, ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever met Mr Tallis.’
But Daisy was distracted, looking curiously about her as they went to the back room. She seemed amazed by it, seeing all Aunt Harriet’s knick-knacks, the tasselled lamps and velvet draping on every possible surface, as if she had never seen such a room before.
‘It smells nice in here,’ she remarked.
‘I know – my aunt always uses a lovely polish on the furniture, and look –’ She pointed to the jar of lavender. ‘She says with all the chemical smells from the workshop she doesn’t want her home smelling like that all the time as well!’
Daisy nodded, still staring about her. She stood with her hands folded in front, her light hair falling down her back; she was wearing a dusty-pink dress, rather loose on her slender frame, but the colour suited her. Margaret thought again what a lovely child she was and wondered who decided on her clothes. She did not want to keep bombarding the child with questions, though.
‘Come, Daisy – sit here with me. And Aunt said we may have some cordial and biscuits a little later.’
She had bought plain paper, lead pencils, coloured crayons. Daisy looked at them in wonder.
‘What do you like to draw?’ Margaret asked. ‘Your friend, perhaps? Do you have a best friend, Daisy?’
‘My best friend is called Lily,’ Daisy said. ‘She is in my form at school.’
‘That’s nice,’ Margaret said carefully. ‘Having a friend to talk to.’
‘Oh . . .’ Daisy said, only half paying attention. ‘I talk to Miss Johnson and Miss Allen in the office as well.’ She was staring at the lavender vase, a ceramic thing, pink roses on a black background. ‘I’d like to draw that.’
She settled, absorbed, with the vase in front of her. Margaret sat beside her. As soon as Daisy started to draw, she was astonished by the girl’s draughtsmanship. Her strong fingers held the pencil as if she was born to it, and the curved, symmetrical lines of the vase, its shape, light and shade, appeared skilfully. The children Margaret had taught in the village could usually only draw the most rudimentary of pictures.
‘That’s beautiful, Daisy!’ she said. ‘Do you do a lot of drawing at home?’
Daisy looked seriously at her. ‘I draw the things that Pa makes. Sometimes he makes the things that I draw as well.’
‘You mean you design things for him?’ Her astonishment increased.
‘Sometimes, yes,’ Daisy said, turning back to her work in her self-possessed way. ‘Pa says that things must be beautiful as well as useful. So I try and make them beautiful.’ She put her head on one side. ‘That vase is quite beautiful. But the pink is a little bit . . . harsh.’
Heavens, Margaret thought, feeling suddenly out of her depth.
‘I make things as well, sometimes.’ Daisy held out her arm and showed a silver bangle, its surface hammered so that its tiny dimpled planes gave back the light. ‘I make the shape in my size on the mandrel and solder it and then I can make patterns if I want.’
‘It’s lovely,’ Margaret said.
‘I’ve made other things – other bracelets, a bowl . . .’ She was matter-of-fact about it. ‘I can teach you, if you want.’
Margaret felt a pulse of delight. Could she really do something like that? But she must be careful not to presume. She had no idea what Mr Tallis might think of any of this.
‘Your father teaches you, I suppose? And what do you want to do when you grow up, Daisy?’ It was not a question she often asked children, because with so many of those in the village it was obvious their future would be to work in the fields and farm cottages. But here things were different and she could see a talent before her. Another aloof look met her.
‘I want to be like my mother,’ she said.
Margaret smiled, and was trying to decide what to reply when the door opened and Aunt Hatt’s smiling face looked around it. She wore a deep plum-coloured dress with a black shawl over it and, as ever, looked very fine.
‘Ah – there you are. Hello, Daisy.’ Her voice was warm and welcoming. ‘Would you like some cordial?’ Aunt Hatt seemed pleased to spoil the girl a little.
Daisy nodded and Aunt Hatt retreated to the kitchen just as Annie appeared as well, pink-cheeked, as if she had been hurrying.
‘Hello!’ She greeted Daisy with pleasure. Both she and Margaret were very used to the company of children, to guiding and teaching. She put her head on one side. ‘My goodness – what a marvellous drawing!’
‘D’you want a cup of tea, Annie?’ Aunt Hatt called from the back.
Soon they were all settled together. Aunt Hatt brought in a tray with tea and lime cordial and shortbread biscuits. Annie had come back from the cleaning session at the factory, bolted down her dinner and hurried out again. Now she was munching on a biscuit as if famished once more.
‘I must say,’ Aunt Hatt remarked as Annie swallowed her mouthful, ‘I’ve never known anyone so small eat so much.’
Annie grinned. ‘It’s because I move very fast, Auntie,’ she said.
‘Well, you certainly do that.’ Aunt Hatt sat back in her chair, relaxing with her tea.
As Annie chatted about her morning, Daisy continued drawing. Each picture was of an object or shape – the vase, symmetrical shapes, curves and spirals and curlicues – as if the draughtsmanship of the jewellery trade was bred into her as closely as breathing. She seemed happy to be there, sitting in the company of women, and sometimes as they chatted she looked up from one to the other of them, gave a little smile and went back to her work.
‘How’s your father, Daisy?’ Aunt Hatt asked.
‘All right, thank you,’ the girl said, not raising her head.
Aunt Hatt rolled her eyes affectionately, as if to say I’ll never understand these people, and relaxed even further, closing her eyes.
‘Have you been to see the Pooles?’ Margaret asked Annie. ‘How’s the baby?’
Annie had been giving them bulletins each evening as to how the family were getting on. As she asked the question, she saw Aunt Hatt open her eyes again. At first their aunt had been baffled and worried as to why Annie was calling on a family in some run-down backyard. Gradually, though, Aunt Hatt had been drawn into concern for and sympathy with the Pooles’ troubles – especially when she heard about what had happened to Mr Poole, and about the poorly baby, Nellie.
‘Yes – she’s come through it,’ Annie said happily. ‘She’s taken some milk today and she’s starting to eat again. She’s a lovely little thing. Course, now it’s the end of the week they’ve got Lizzie’s wages.’
‘And yours,’ Aunt Hatt pointed out.
‘Well, yes – but mine have gone on paying off what they owed,’ Annie said, frowning.
Margaret watched her sister’s intent face, thinking with a painful pang of their parents. Here was Annie, a born missionary who somehow did not want to be one – or at least, not the way the Church defined it. Margaret was the one who had assumed herself to be cut out for mission work. But she felt put to shame, often, by Annie’s passion on behalf of others. And now, increasingly, she felt cut adrift from all that had gone before, from what she had thought she was destined to be.
‘I just don’t know how they’re going to go on,’ Annie was saying. ‘The younger children are so little and even the boy, Den, is only nine. He’s small for his age but he looks a tough little nut. The parish won’t help, with Lizzie working, and so much falls on her. But if Mrs Poole went out to work there’d be no one to look after the children.’
‘What about her mother?’ Aunt Hatt asked. ‘Can’t she lend a hand?’
‘She died in the workhouse, when Mrs Poole was born,’ Annie said. ‘I don’t think she has any other family.’
Aunt Hatt’s face sobered even more. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said sorrowfully.
Annie shook her head. ‘It’s all wrong. It’s as if they’re being punished for being alive – for all sorts of things they can’t help.’
‘Well, they can’t rely on you for ever,’ Aunt Hatt pointed out. ‘However kind you are to them.’
‘We must pray for them, Annie,’ Margaret said, because she could not think of anything else to offer.
She heard her aunt make a small ‘huh!’ sound, but she sat back and did not argue.
‘Auntie?’ Now seemed a good opportunity to ask. ‘Can you explain to me – I don’t understand why everyone thinks that German gentleman’s name is so funny. Mr von Titz?’
Aunt Hatt’s head shot round, startled. She found three sets of eyes watching her – not only Margaret’s and Annie’s but Daisy’s as well – all waiting for an explanation.
‘Well,’ she said, apparently thrown into confusion. Margaret realized that the added pink in her cheeks was not just from the fire. She looked away and then turned back to them, and Margaret was even more confused when she saw that her aunt was trying not to laugh. ‘You girls really are innocents, aren’t you? D’you really not know?’
Margaret and Annie exchanged baffled glances. ‘No,’ Margaret said.
‘All right,’ Aunt Hatt said. ‘I suppose it won’t hurt this one to hear it as well.’ She nodded at Daisy. ‘His name is another word for – you know . . .’ She ran her hands descriptively down the top half of her body.
‘Bosoms?’ Annie said.
‘You got it,’ Aunt Hatt said, laughing. Daisy started laughing as well.
‘Von Titz,’ Margaret said, a blush rising in her cheeks. ‘Oh, dear – I see what you mean now.’
It was growing dark outside and soon Aunt Hatt said to Daisy, ‘You’d better get off home now – your pa’ll be missing you.’
Daisy got up obediently. She could easily have run back next door on her own, but she held out her hand to Margaret.
‘Come and see my things?’ she said. ‘The things I’ve made.’
Margaret was touched at this girl, who seemed so self-contained and grown up, suddenly asking like a child. The two of them went out into the smoky dark.
In the hall of number twenty-four there was a smell of meat cooking and the only crack of light came from the middle room, the door ajar. Daisy trotted along and pushed it open. Suddenly Margaret felt nervous.
‘Hello.’ She heard a deep, fond voice from within. ‘Have you been next door all this time? I should think you’ve worn out your welcome.’
‘No!’ Daisy sounded happy. ‘And Miss Hanson has come with me – I said I’d show her my things.’
Too young to think about introducing her guest, she disappeared excitedly into the room, presumably to look for her ‘things’. Margaret thought she had better show herself.
The room, which she could see was the living room of the father and daughter, occupied the same space as Aunt Hatt’s next door, but could hardly have been more different. A simple oval mirror hung over the mantelpiece, on which rested a very few objects; there was the workbench at the far end on which she had seen the silver bowl, a table for eating and two easy chairs by the fire. In the gas light she saw that the walls were papered in a parchment colour, strewn with delicate, rust-coloured leaves. It felt lighter and simpler altogether than next door.
A man had got to his feet from one of the chairs. She took in a tall, burly figure with a head of fuzzy, barely controlled dark brown hair and a thick beard. He was dressed mainly in brown, except for the cream shirt under his waistcoat, sleeves rolled up to show thick, strong-looking forearms. Above the beard, large eyes within a fleshy face – serious, sad, did she imagine the sadness? – were looking unwaveringly at her. Overall, this large, unusual-looking person, who had not yet uttered a word, affected her. Something about his sheer presence had a force to it.
‘I’m Margaret Hanson,’ she said, as her hand disappeared into his massive, muscular one; it gave hers a brief but bracing shake before releasing it again. She heard a tremor in her voice and felt foolish. What on earth was the matter with her? There was something overwhelming about Philip Tallis, his gaze, like that of his daughter, disconcertingly direct. ‘Daisy has been with us next door this afternoon – as I hope she told you.’ She tried to regain her natural way of talking. ‘Doing a little drawing. She is very gifted at it.’
She smiled at Daisy, who was looking up at her, radiant. The girl was holding a number of silver bracelets and a little dish which she raised to show to Margaret.
‘I made all these!’ she said.
‘Oh, aren’t they lovely!’ Margaret exclaimed. The bracelets were silver and of various patterns and textures. She took the bowl to examine the dimpled textures of the beaten silver, and the shallow, curving shape, primitive but effective. ‘You are a very clever girl, Daisy.’
The large presence beside her had cleared his throat gently, watching them, but still had said nothing, so Margaret turned to him.
‘I’m glad to meet Daisy’s father at last,’ she said, so brightly that she immediately felt foolish. But then, damn it, why did he not say anything? She was taken aback by her own irritation.
‘Yes.’ His voice was gentle. ‘Philip Tallis.’ Like the sudden and unexpected cleaving open of a rock, he smiled. ‘Nice for Daisy to have women for company. I’m grateful to you.’
‘Oh, it was a pleasure,’ Margaret said. Somehow in Philip Tallis’s presence she felt light, wispy almost, and disconcertingly female. ‘She’s a lovely girl and very talented. You’re welcome to come again, Daisy.’
‘Thank you, Miss Hanson,’ the girl said formally.
Margaret said goodbye to them both and Philip Tallis saw her to the door.
‘Goodnight,’ he said.
And his voice, like his smile, affected her. Was it he who had made that thing of utter beauty that she had seen before? Outside, she stood for a moment in the chill evening, remembering. Am I so susceptible? she thought. Only yesterday she had been curious about Mr Carson. They were both men who seemed to exude character. They each had a power to them.
But for heaven’s sake! she thought. What was she thinking – after all that had happened, after him? The pain of it all filled her again; the way Charles Barber had taken and trounced her hungry young heart.
I must guard myself well, she thought, stepping back into number twenty-six. Men are not to be trusted – we are better off remaining spinsters and finding useful things to do.