Lady Daisy Read online

  He looked up at the attic’s dormer window, out of which the cardboard boxes had come sailing, and at the window of his own room directly below.

  ‘Gran,’ he said, ‘how long have you lived in this old house?’

  ‘Since I married your grandfather, nearly fifty years ago.’

  ‘He died when I was very small, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose I’ve always liked this house,’ Ned said, ‘but now I like it even more. I don’t know why.’

  I do, he thought.

  ‘Just as well, pet,’ said his grandmother, ‘seeing it’ll be yours one day.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Yes. Hasn’t Dad explained to you about the entail?’

  ‘The entail? What’s that?’

  ‘You don’t know, eh? Well, I think it’s time you did. After all, you’re nearly in double figures. It means that this house, with its estate, can’t be sold to anyone else. It’s entailed, within the family. It belonged to your grandfather, and before that to his father and before that to his father’s father, and so on.’

  ‘But now it belongs to you?’

  ‘No, it belongs to your dad. He was the heir to the estate, but he and your mum are perfectly happy where they are, at your home, so they let me go on living here. But when I’m in my box–’

  ‘Oh Gran, don’t!’

  ‘–all right, when I drop off my perch, if you like, then you will all come and live here. And in the same way, at some time – a long, long way in the future, we hope – this house will be yours.’

  For some time, while Gran plied her secateurs, Ned was silent. The whole idea was too big for him to grasp. That this house should one day belong to him. It seemed somehow linked to Lady Daisy.

  At last he said, ‘Gran.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your husband – my grandfather, I mean – I never knew his name. Was he called Sidney?’

  His grandmother straightened up and turned to face him.

  ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘my husband’s name was Harold. It was his father who was called Sidney – your great-grandfather. Someone must have told you that and you got the generations muddled.’

  ‘So Sidney lived here?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Oh. Did he have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘He had a sister, a younger sister. She would have been your great-great-aunt if she had lived, but she died of scarlet fever when she was very young.’

  ‘How young?’

  ‘Oh, let me see, she can’t have been more than five. Yes, that’s right, she died in 1901, not long after the old Queen. She was called after her – Victoria.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Not 1901

  Ned went up to his room while Gran was cooking lunch. He took the doll out of her box and lifted her up.

  The moment her eyes opened, she continued the sentence she had been speaking nearly three hours before, just as though no time had elapsed.

  ‘. . . say so,’ she said. ‘You have nice manners. What boarding-school do you attend?’

  ‘I go to our local primary school,’ said Ned.

  ‘How strange,’ said Lady Daisy. ‘Sidney is a boarder at one of the best-known preparatory schools in the country, and in due course he will go on to public school.’

  ‘Oh, our school’s public,’ said Ned. ‘Anyone can go. And I’ll be back there before long, it’s nearly the end of the holidays. I’m going home tomorrow, my parents are coming to fetch me.’

  ‘Will they come by the railway?’ asked Lady Daisy. ‘Or has your father one of these new-fangled motor cars?’

  I don’t know about new-fangled, thought Ned. It’s a C-reg Volvo estate with 60,000 miles on the clock.

  ‘They’ll come by car,’ he said, and then, though he had not planned to say any such thing at this moment, he suddenly added, ‘Will you come home with us?’

  ‘On a visit, do you mean?’

  ‘No, to stay. For always. To live with us. I should like it so much if you would.’

  ‘It is most kind of you to invite me, Ned,’ said Lady Daisy, ‘but such a thing is quite out of the question. My duty is to Victoria. Whatever would she do without me? She would have no one to push out in the doll’s pram, no one to tuck up in the doll’s bed, no one to read to, or recite to, or say her multiplication tables to. Whatever would the master of the house and the mistress and Master Sidney say, not to mention the governess and the nursemaid and the cook and all the other servants, to see Miss Victoria without her beloved Lady Daisy Chain? It is not only that my dollmother is devoted to me, you see, Ned. I am devoted to her.’

  ‘But,’ said Ned, and stopped himself on the brink of saying, ‘she’s been dead for eighty-nine years.’

  ‘I fear there are no “buts”,’ said Lady Daisy firmly. ‘My place is here.’

  In the afternoon Ned settled down in the sitting-room with a book while Gran had a nap, but he wasn’t reading.

  What am I going to do? he thought. I could put her back in the box-room, inside the shoebox tied up with string, just as I found her, and no one would ever know. But that would be horrible – like murder. So I must tell Gran that I’ve found her. Then what? Well, ask Gran straight out if I can take her home with me, to keep. But she’ll probably say, ‘A great boy like you, wanting a doll!’ Or she’ll decide she must stay here as a sort of family heirloom. Or perhaps she’ll give her to some little girl, one of my cousins maybe, or she might even want to sell her, because I bet a doll that old is pretty valuable. Well, at least I can ask. But then what about Lady Daisy – supposing Gran does let me have her, I mean? She still believes that everything is just as it was in 1901. She has no idea that Victoria and Sidney and everyone else she was talking about have been dead and gone for donkey’s years. I’ll have to break it to her. It’ll be a terrible shock. It might break her heart.

  And then, quite suddenly, he felt sure that – supposing she had one – it wouldn’t, that Lady Daisy Chain was a brave and resolute person who would come to terms with the loss of her adored Victoria and accept instead the protection of another. Me, said Ned to himself. I shall never forgive myself if I don’t try. Now.

  Upstairs, he took the doll out of her box and carried her round the bedroom, trying to think how best to explain things to her.

  ‘How very oddly this room is furnished,’ said Lady Daisy, as her gaze fell upon the simple divan bed with its duvet, the neat fitted cupboards and the general lack of furniture and fussy decoration in a modern bedroom.

  ‘The bed – how low it is and how cold it looks. Why, the fireplace is boarded up, I declare, and as for the walls, where have all the pictures gone – the landscapes, the miniatures, the silhouettes? And the mantelshelf is bare of all its ornaments, and the gaslights – where are they? I do not recognize it at all.’

  By now they had arrived at the window, and Ned held the doll up to look out.

  ‘Where has the cedar tree gone?’ cried Lady Daisy.

  ‘What cedar tree?’

  ‘Why, there was a magnificent cedar of Lebanon just outside this window – the children had a tree-house in it. And the row of elms beyond – not one to be seen. And where have the Shorthorn cows gone? Whatever are those great black-and-white brutes grazing the home pasture? I never saw such creatures before.’

  ‘Those are Friesians,’ said Ned.

  ‘And look,’ went on Lady Daisy, ‘there is some sort of monstrous contrivance in the cornfield!’

  ‘That’s a combine harvester,’ said Ned.

  ‘And what are those extraordinary structures that I see on the horizon?’

  ‘Those are electricity pylons. You see, Lady Daisy, it isn’t actually 1901 any more.’

  At that moment, with a sudden shattering roar of sound, a low-flying fighter aircraft flashed across before them, at a couple of hundred feet and a modest 400 m.p.h.

  Ned turned the doll round to face him and for a long moment she gazed at him in silence. Then
she said, ‘Not 1901, I think you said. Ned, I am inclined to believe you. Pray, tell me then, what year is it?’

  ‘It’s 1990,’ said Ned. ‘When I first woke you, you said you must have overslept. In fact, you had been asleep a very, very long time.’

  ‘In that box?’

  ‘Yes. In that box, tied up with string and left in a corner of the box-room.’

  ‘But Victoria would never have done so cruel a deed.’

  Ned stood the doll upon the window-sill and, in a quite natural gesture, took both her small gloved hands, raising her arms towards him.

  ‘Victoria died,’ he said gently. ‘Of the scarlet fever. In 1901. When she told you of the death of her namesake, the old Queen, those were the last words she spoke to you. Her mother and father, I suppose, could not bear to be reminded of her by the sight of you, so you were put away.’

  Again there was a long pause while Lady Daisy stared at him, expressionless and unblinking as ever, out of those baby-blue eyes.

  At last she said, in tones of wonderment, ‘1990! To think! Ninety years since the Relief of Mafeking.’

  Ned said nothing, since the remark meant nothing to him.

  ‘That awful machine,’ said Lady Daisy, ‘that flashed across the sky just now, howling and screaming like a demon – what was that?’

  ‘Just an aeroplane.’

  ‘An aeroplane?’

  ‘Yes, a fighter, a Tornado actually, they’re not all that fast.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh no. I mean, when a spacecraft is blasting off, it gets up to about 25,000 miles an hour – like the one they used when the first men landed on the moon in 1969, you know.’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Lady Daisy faintly. ‘Men on the moon? I am quite overcome.’

  ‘It must be an awful shock,’ said Ned. ‘You’d better lie down for a bit,’ and, without really thinking what he was doing, he laid the doll in her box.

  ‘Lady Daisy,’ he said ‘d’you mind if I show you to my grandmother?’ But of course she did not reply.

  After tea his grandmother said, ‘This time tomorrow, you’ll be at home.’

  ‘I don’t really want to go, Gran,’ Ned said.

  ‘Afraid you’ll have to – school starts soon, doesn’t it? Anyway, I seem to remember you saying you were bored.’

  ‘That was before . . . oh, look, Gran, there’s something I haven’t told you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, when we were clearing out the box-room, I found something. I’ll go and get her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Yes, shan’t be a minute.’

  ‘I found this,’ he said when he came downstairs with the shoebox, and, putting it on the table, removed the lid.

  Ned’s grandmother looked down at the sleeping Lady Daisy Chain, at her green gown with its pink sash and the black armband, at her pink shoes and her long white gloves, and gave a cry of surprise and delight.

  ‘A doll!’ she said. ‘What a beautiful doll! And what good condition it’s in, considering it must be Victorian, I should think, by the style of dress. And you found it in this shoebox?’

  ‘Tied up with string. Wedged in a far corner.’

  ‘How strange. It must have belonged to someone in the family, to some little girl of those times, perhaps to your great-great-aunt Victoria.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ned.

  ‘Isn’t she lovely!’ said Gran, and she reached into the box.

  Oh no, thought Ned, she’s going to lift her up! And her eyes will open! And she’ll speak! Oh no!

  ‘Oh look,’ said Gran, ‘her eyes are opening. After all this time. You could almost imagine she was going to say something.’

  Oh don’t, Lady Daisy, please don’t, thought Ned, and as though he had spoken out loud, the doll stared at his grandmother in utter silence.

  ‘Where have you been hiding her?’ asked Gran, putting the doll back into the box.

  ‘In my room.’

  His grandmother looked at him consideringly.

  ‘D’you like her?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Very much.’

  ‘Have you given her a name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s called . . . I call her Lady Daisy Chain.’

  ‘After the motif on her gown. How nice! And how clever of you to have found her, pet – I’m most grateful to you. I shall treasure her.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose she’d be worth a lot of money.’

  ‘Oh loads, I should think, but that’s not important. I should never sell her. She is obviously one of the family. She’d look awfully nice in that corner-cupboard over there, don’t you think? I’ve got some other bits of Victoriana in it already. You could see her up there, whenever you came to stay.’

  Despite himself, Ned felt the tears gathering. To think of Lady Daisy standing shut up for ever in that glass-fronted cupboard, crying out perhaps to be released, but unable to make herself heard!

  He turned away so that his grandmother should not see his face, and looked out of the window. Then he swallowed, and said quickly in a choky voice, ‘Please can I have her?’

  ‘For your own, d’you mean, Ned? To take home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His grandmother came up behind him and put her hands on his shoulders, and stared out over his head at the part of the lawn where once (though she did not know it) the great cedar of Lebanon had stood.

  ‘Finders keepers, eh?’ she said.

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Ned, ‘and I don’t mean for my very own, I mean – to look after. Like you said about this house, you know, that it has to stay within the family because of the what-d’you-call-it.’

  ‘The entail?’

  ‘Yes. Lady Daisy Chain could be entailed. Only I’d take care of her for now. Could I, Gran?’

  His grandmother turned him round and looked at him, and saw how near to tears he’d been, and smiled. Then she picked up the shoebox with its green-gowned occupant and gave it to him.

  She looked down at the doll.

  ‘Off you go then, Lady Daisy,’ she said. ‘You’ll come back here again one day.’

  ‘Oh thanks, thanks, Gran!’ said Ned.

  Gran gently stroked the doll’s long black hair.

  ‘I wonder,’ she murmured, ‘what she would say if she could speak.’

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘A Capital Arrangement’

  ‘That lady,’ said the doll to Ned when they were alone together again in his room. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘That’s my grandmother.’

  ‘Your grandmother!’ said Lady Daisy in a shocked voice. ‘But she was wearing trousers!’

  ‘She often does, usually in fact. So does Mum. Nearly all women do nowadays.’

  ‘Extraordinary! You will be telling me next that men wear ear-rings and necklaces.’

  ‘Quite a lot do.’

  ‘Now come, Ned, do not tease. It is difficult enough for me to adjust, as it is. The sitting-room, for example – how changed it appears. The walls once again almost bare of pictures, and as for the furniture – why, no chaise-longue, no Chesterfield, no Davenport, no Canterbury to hold the sheets of music for the grand piano. The piano is still there, yes, but its legs – they were exposed! In my day they were always covered, each with a little frill.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Lady Daisy,’ said Ned. ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘I can only hope,’ went on the doll, ‘that when your grandmother does wear a dress, the skirts are of a length to conceal her lower limbs. Only the ankles may be revealed, as every lady knows. To show more to a gentleman’s gaze would be most improper.’

  ‘Things have changed,’ said Ned. ‘Fashions are different, you know.’

  ‘Everything is different, it seems to me. What, for example, was that strange object in the corner of the sitting-room? A kind of large square box with a glass window let into the front of it?’

  ‘Oh, that’s the television set.’

  ‘Tel
evision? What is that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ned, ‘first of all they invented radio . . .’

  ‘Radio? What is that?’

  ‘It’s a machine that you switch on and then you can hear people talking and music and all that. And then they invented television, where you can hear people and see them too, in colour. You can see things happening all over the world, live, they beam it by satellite. I tell you what, Lady Daisy, I’ll show you. I’ll put the telly on and you can see for yourself. We’ll wait till Gran’s out of the way somewhere. Which reminds me. I’m ever so grateful you didn’t speak to her when she picked you up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want it to be our secret. I don’t want you to talk to other people. I don’t want them to know.’

  ‘Victoria was just the same. See, I said “was” quite naturally. Poor little dollmother. To die so young. But she was always delicate.’

  ‘You mustn’t be sad,’ said Ned. ‘It was all so long ago. I want you to be happy and I’ll do my best to see that you are, if you’ll let me. I asked Gran and she said I could take you home with me and look after you. Only, of course, I wouldn’t unless you agreed to come. Will you?’

  ‘You are a strange lad, Ned,’ said Lady Daisy, ‘to wish to have a doll. Why, Sidney and his playfellows would never have dreamed of such a thing. They were only interested in manly pursuits – making believe that they were soldiers of the Queen fighting the crafty Boers, or indulging in a bout of fisticuffs, or playing at cricket or football.’

  ‘Oh, I like football,’ Ned said. ‘I play for our school’s First XI. I’m the keeper.’

  ‘And now you wish to keep me?’

  ‘If you would like that.’

  ‘To adopt me, in fact?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stared at one another. By now Ned had become used to the fact that looking into the doll’s eyes told him nothing. That they were open showed she was awake, but as to what she was feeling, he had no clue. Since she could not move a muscle, there was no smile or frown on the smooth waxen face to guide him, but only the blank blue stare.