Lady Daisy Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1 In the Box-room

  Chapter 2 Victoria and Sidney

  Chapter 3 Not 1901

  Chapter 4 ‘A Capital Arrangement’

  Chapter 5 A Battered Old Shoebox

  Chapter 6 Secrets Everywhere

  Chapter 7 The Project

  Chapter 8 ‘That’ll Teach Him!’

  Chapter 9 Goalkeeping Practice

  Chapter 10 Mr Merryweather-Jones

  Chapter 11 Quite a Sum of Money

  Chapter 12 ‘Will You Be All Right?’

  Chapter 13 Emjay Antiques

  Chapter 14 ‘I’ve Found Her!’

  Chapter 15 Snookered

  Chapter 16 17/6/2010

  About the Author

  Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. Later he taught at a village primary school. His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978. He wrote a great number of children’s books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry’s Mad, Noah’s Brother, The Queen’s Nose, Martin’s Mice, Ace, The Cuckoo Child and Harriet’s Hare (winner of the Children’s Book Award in 1995). At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children’s Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made an OBE for services to children’s literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.

  Discover more about Dick King-Smith at: dickkingsmith.com

  Some other books by Dick King-Smith

  BLESSU

  DINOSAUR SCHOOL

  DINOSAUR TROUBLE

  DUMPLING

  FAT LAWRENCE

  THE FOX BUSTERS

  GEORGE SPEAKS

  THE GOLDEN GOOSE

  HARRY’S MAD

  THE HODGEHEG

  THE JENIUS

  JUST BINNIE

  LADY DAISY

  THE MAGIC CARPET SLIPPERS

  MAGNUS POWERMOUSE

  MARTIN’S MICE

  THE MOUSE FAMILY ROBINSON

  POPPET

  THE QUEEN’S NOSE

  THE SCHOOLMOUSE

  THE SHEEP-PIG

  SMASHER

  THE SWOOSE

  UNDER THE MISHMASH TREES

  THE WATER HORSE

  CHAPTER 1

  In the Box-room

  ‘I’m bored!’ said Ned.

  He stood with his hands in his pockets and his lower lip stuck out, staring out of the window of his grandmother’s sitting-room.

  Outside it was blowing half a gale, the heavens were emptying and the raindrops chased one another endlessly down the window-pane.

  ‘When I was your age,’ said his grandmother, ‘we made our own amusements. Haven’t you got a book to read?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s boring.’

  ‘Well, draw or do a jigsaw or a crossword puzzle or play a game of Patience. Which is something you could do with, Ned. You seem to expect to be entertained all the time. If you go on saying you’re bored, I shall find you some work to do. Like cleaning the silver. Except that you’d make an awful mess of it.’

  Ned’s grandmother put down her embroidery, took off her spectacles and stood up.

  ‘Talking of awful messes,’ she said, ‘has just given me a brilliant idea. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but I’ve funked it. A filthy day like this would be just the time to tackle it, specially with a big strong nine-year-old boy to help me.’

  Ned brightened at being called big and strong, but he was suspicious. Whatever it was sounded like hard work.

  ‘I shouldn’t bother, Gran,’ he said hastily. ‘I’ll be all right. I’ll find something to do.’

  ‘Too right you will, pet,’ said his grandmother. ‘We are going to clear out the box-room.’

  ‘The box-room?’ said Ned. ‘Whatever’s that? I didn’t know you had one.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll show you.’

  ‘But this is the attic,’ said Ned, when they had climbed three flights of stairs to the top of the old house. ‘Oh Gran, we’re never going to clear out all this stuff?’

  He looked around at the assortment of junk that stood on the boarded floor of the long narrow room directly below the roof. There were trunks and suitcases and hat-boxes, bags of old golf-clubs, some cases of stuffed birds, a number of framed paintings leaning against the wall, piles of old books, offcuts of carpeting and all manner of other things that Gran kept ‘because they might come in useful one day’. Standing proudly above the rest was a dapple-grey rocking-horse with flaring salmon-pink nostrils. A younger Ned had often ridden it when nosing about in the attic, and now he sat on its wooden saddle, his feet touching the ground, and urged it into squeaky action.

  ‘I didn’t know you called this the box-room,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t,’ said his grandmother.

  She picked her way towards the far end of the room, where there stood a tall, folding tapestry screen.

  ‘Give me a hand to move this, can you, pet?’ she said, and when they had done so, Ned could see that what had always seemed to be the end wall of the attic, was not. There was a little door in it, no more than four feet high, and when his grandmother had opened it and switched on a light within, Ned could see that there was yet another room beyond. It was filled from floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes.

  There were hundreds of them, of all shapes and sizes, from boxes small enough to have held an alarm clock or a coffee mug to great cartons you could have put a week’s supermarket.shopping.in.

  ‘Gran!’ cried Ned. ‘Whatever have you kept all these for?’

  His grandmother grinned a bit sheepishly.

  ‘You never know when you might need a box for something or other,’ she said. ‘But I have been intending to clear the place out, honestly I have, Ned. For about forty years. I keep saying to myself, I must do it before they put me in my own one.’

  ‘Own what?’

  ‘Box.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Wooden box – coffin – you know.’

  ‘Oh Gran!’ said Ned.

  ‘Comes to us all,’ said his grandmother. ‘But not for a while yet, let’s hope. Come on, let’s start,’ and she bent to get through the low doorway. ‘No,’ she said, ‘on second thoughts, that’s not a good idea. I may not be the tallest woman in the world, but ducking under there isn’t going to do my back any good at all. Would you mind passing them out to me?’

  ‘Course I will,’ said Ned.

  He looked round the attic.

  ‘Tell you what, Gran,’ he said. ‘If you open that window there, you can chuck them straight out as I give them to you, and they’ll land on the lawn below. Save us carrying them all downstairs. Then we can have a bonfire.’

  ‘But they’ll get wet outside.’

  ‘No they won’t. Look, the rain’s nearly stopped, Gran.’

  So, for the best part of half an hour, Ned carried out box after box and passed them to his grandmother, and she threw them out of the window with loud cries of ‘Heads below!’ and ‘Timber!’ and ‘Bombs gone!’ until at last the box-room was almost empty.

  ‘Nearly done, Gran,’ Ned said.

  ‘How many more?’

  ‘About a dozen.’

  ‘You can chuck those out while I’m going downstairs,’ said his grandmother. ‘And then shut the window and turn the lights off, will you?’

  When the final box had gone spinning down, Ned took a last look through the box-room’s little door. Then he saw that there was still one left, a shoebox tucked right under the angle that the roof made with the edge of the floor. He pulled it out and saw that, unlike the rest, it was neatly tied up wi
th string. Picked up, it felt too heavy for an empty shoebox. Ned undid the string and took off the lid.

  Inside there lay a doll.

  She was perhaps eighteen inches from head to toe, and dressed in an ankle-length gown nipped at the waist by a sash of pink silk. The gown was apple-green and patterned with circlets of flowers, little white flowers with yellow centres, and round one arm the doll wore a black velvet band. Her shoes were pink to match the sash, and on her arms were elbow-length white gloves.

  Her hair was black and flowing, and her face was rosy-cheeked and rosebud-mouthed like all her kind, the closed eyes fringed with long dark lashes. As Ned stared at the doll, he heard his grandmother’s voice from the lawn below, calling him to hurry, they must carry all the boxes down to the orchard and set them alight before the rain should start again.

  Quickly Ned put the lid back on and, opening an old trunk that stood near by, popped the shoebox in. He closed the window, turned off the lights and ran downstairs.

  Later that day, when the contents of the box-room had been reduced to a pile of ashes in the orchard, Ned climbed back up to the attic.

  He took the shoebox from its hiding-place, opened it and lifted out the doll. He had said nothing to his grandmother about finding it, he didn’t quite know why. Dolls were girls’ things, of course, but it wasn’t that.

  As he stood the black-haired doll upright on top of the trunk, its eyelids slid back, and it gazed at him out of its two large round baby-blue eyes. Then it spoke.

  ‘Who in the world are you?’ said the doll.

  Ned gulped. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and his legs felt funny.

  ‘My name’s Ned,’ he said in a croaky voice.

  ‘Why are you wearing fancy dress?’ said the doll.

  Ned glanced down at his jersey and T-shirt and jeans and trainers, and could think of nothing to say but, ‘I’m not.’

  ‘And where is Victoria?’ asked the doll. ‘I may have overslept a little, I grant you, but I had expected to see Victoria, as usual.’

  ‘Who’s Victoria?’ asked Ned.

  ‘My dollmother.’

  ‘Dollmother?’

  ‘The little girl who looks after me. She is younger than you, I should say. How old are you, by the bye?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Ah, Victoria is but five. Now, let me see, the last thing I remember her saying was that the dear Queen is dead. Is that not sad?’

  ‘The Queen’s not dead,’ said Ned. ‘If she was, Charles would be King.’

  ‘Charles?’ said the doll. ‘History, I can see, is not your strong subject. Charles the Second died more than two hundred years ago. You’ll be telling me next that the Queen’s name is Elizabeth.’

  ‘Well, it is.’

  ‘Foolish boy! Why, my dollmother is named after our great Queen-Empress. For sixty-four years Queen Victoria has reigned over us, and now she is gone. Nothing will ever be the same again.’

  Nothing ever will be, thought Ned. Then he said, ‘What year do you think . . . I mean, what year is it – now?’

  ‘Do you know nothing, Master Ned?’ said the doll. ‘Why, it is 1901, of course.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ned.

  He forced himself to look into the wide blue eyes. It was unnerving to be addressed without facial movement of any kind.

  He summoned up his courage and said, very politely, ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you are called.’

  ‘Strange,’ said the doll. ‘One would have expected Victoria to have told you.’

  She said nothing further but continued to stare expressionlessly until at last, in desperation, Ned said, ‘What are you called?’

  ‘My name,’ said the doll, ‘is Lady Daisy Chain.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ned.

  Despite himself, he took hold of the doll’s white-gloved right hand to shake it, and as he pulled, the arm, its upper part encircled by the black band of mourning for the late great Queen, moved stiffly forward on its shoulder-joint.

  ‘How do you do?’ he said.

  CHAPTER 2

  Victoria and Sidney

  At that moment, Ned heard his grandmother calling him.

  ‘Coming!’ he shouted, and to the doll he said, ‘Excuse me. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He returned the rigid arm to her side, and, taking her gently by the shoulders, laid her back in the box. As her body moved towards the horizontal, so the long-lashed eyelids slid forward and blanked out the blue eyes.

  ‘Is it all right to put the lid on?’ he whispered, but she did not reply.

  ‘Ned!’ called his grandmother again, nearer now, and he ran hastily out of the attic, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Sorry, Gran,’ he said when he reached her. ‘I was up in the attic.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just making sure I’d turned the lights off.’

  At first, when Ned turned off his own light that night, he could not get to sleep. His mind was in a whirl, and when he did drop off, his dreams were mostly unpleasant. In one, he himself lay in a huge cardboard box, and suddenly a short fat old lady dressed in black and wearing a crown on her head looked over the edge of it and said in a loud, plummy voice, ‘Who in the world are you?’

  When he woke early next morning, he half felt that the whole business had been a dream. Quietly, so as not to disturb his grandmother, he climbed to the attic and opened the box-room door. There was the doll, lying in her shoebox just as he had left her. He knelt beside it.

  ‘Lady Daisy,’ he said, ‘wake up. It’s me, Ned.’

  Silence.

  ‘It was a dream,’ said Ned aloud. ‘I imagined it all. I must be going crackers.’

  He suddenly felt enormously sad, and he picked up the doll and held her in front of him at arm’s length. As she rose to the vertical, her eyes opened.

  ‘Why,’ said Lady Daisy Chain, ‘it is Ned! Good morning. I trust you are well?’

  ‘Oh yes, Lady Daisy, very well, thank you!’ said Ned happily, as understanding burst upon him.

  I’ve got it, he thought. The moment her eyes close, she’s fast asleep! And she stays like that till someone sets her upright. When I took her out of that box yesterday, she’d been asleep for . . . let’s see . . . eighty-nine years! I wish I knew more about this five-year-old Victoria she talked about. Why did the girl suddenly lose interest in her and put her away in a box tied up with string?

  ‘Lady Daisy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Ned?’

  ‘This girl, Victoria – your dollmother – what was she like?’

  ‘Was?’ said Lady Daisy. ‘You mean, what is she like?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘She is a charming child, well-mannered and dutiful, and attentive to her lessons. She could teach you a thing or two, I dare say – about History, for example. As to her looks, she has fair hair worn in ringlets, and eyes much the colour of my own. She is, however, not strong. Her constitution is delicate, and care needs to be taken of her health. Unlike her brother, Sidney, who is three years the elder. He is a sturdy scamp and always up to mischief. Tell me, Ned, have you any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why then, you must seek out Sidney. He is almost of your own age and always game for a prank. It will enliven your stay here.’

  ‘Oh, I’m quite happy being with you, Lady Daisy,’ said Ned without thinking, and he stood her carefully on a nearby table, pushing forward a pile of books to support her back. From this vantage point, the doll’s direct gaze fell upon the rocking-horse.

  ‘Why,’ she said, ‘whatever is Victoria’s beloved Dobbin doing up here in the attic? For that matter, what are we doing here? Pray take me downstairs, Ned, I beg of you.’

  Ned hesitated. Below, he heard the sound of movement and then the water-tank at the other end of the attic began to gurgle, telling him that his grandmother was running her morning bath. Once she was safely shut in the bathroom, he could take Lady Daisy down to his o
wn room, but even so, it would be better to be safe than sorry, for he had no intention yet of sharing his secret.

  He picked the doll off the table.

  ‘We’ll go to my room,’ he said, but first (he thought) I’ll prove this business of waking and sleeping once and for all.

  ‘Lady Daisy,’ he said. ‘Before we go, could you recite something for me? A poem perhaps?’

  ‘If you would like it, certainly. There is a favourite of Victoria’s that would serve.’

  ‘How many verses has it?’ said Ned.

  ‘Only two.’

  ‘Please say it,’ said Ned, and Lady Daisy began.

  ‘Here’s Lettie in her coach and pair,

  With Puss, and Rose, and Jane the fair,

  All going for a ride.

  For horses, brothers Tom and Jack,

  With cousin Fred to push at back,

  While Carlo runs beside.’

  The moment she had finished the first verse, Ned tipped her backwards. Her eyes closed and she fell abruptly silent.

  Quickly he placed her in the shoebox, put on the lid and made his way down to his room. He closed the door, sat on the bed, opened the box and, taking out the doll, propped her upright and now open-eyed, upon the bedside table. Immediately she continued:

  ‘I hope that Puss will sit quite still

  While they are going up the hill

  That looks far o’er the plain.

  There they will rest and watch the sea,

  Its white waves dancing merrily,

  And then come back again.’

  ‘Very nice indeed,’ said Ned. ‘You spoke it beautifully.’

  He heard the bathroom door open and the sound of his grandmother’s footsteps coming along the corridor.

  ‘It is kind of you to –’ began Lady Daisy, and then fell instantly silent as Ned put her hastily into the shoebox and slipped it beneath the bed.

  His grandmother stuck her head round the door.

  ‘You awake?’ she said. ‘Oh yes, I can see you are. Bathroom’s all yours.’

  After breakfast, they were having a walk round the garden. Gran was doing some deadheading and Ned some deep thinking.