Lady Daisy Read online

  ‘It’s under the bed.’

  Ned’s mother stood up again and smiled at him and gave him a hug, saying, ‘Funny old boy! Now then, I think you should be in the bed. It’s been a long day and it’s getting late.’

  Ned was suddenly filled with a mixture of feelings – pleasure at being hugged, relief at not having to give up the shoebox, a sort of guilt at being so secretive about its contents, and a kind of pride in the possession of Lady Daisy and a wish to show her off.

  He knelt down and slid out the box, and put it on the bed and opened it.

  ‘That’s what Gran gave me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, what a beautiful doll!’ his mother cried, just as his grandmother had, and then she listened as Ned told her of the clearing out of the box-room, and how he had at first kept his find a secret from Gran, and then showed it to her. ‘And Gran said I could look after her, you see, Mum.’

  ‘I had a doll when I was a little girl,’ said his mother. ‘Not as old as this one or as splendidly dressed, but I was fond of her. When you picked her up, she opened her eyes and said “Mama” in a squeaky voice. What’s this one called?’

  ‘Lady Daisy Chain.’

  ‘What a lovely name. May I pick her up?’

  ‘If you like.’

  As she was lifted up, Lady Daisy’s eyes opened wide, but no sound came from her.

  ‘Lovely blue eyes,’ said Ned’s mother, ‘but she doesn’t say anything.’

  ‘It’d give you a shock if she did,’ said Ned. ‘Just imagine – a doll that could talk to you!’

  His mother laughed, and laid Lady Daisy back in the box.

  ‘It’s a pity you can’t, my girl,’ she said. ‘You could tell Ned to get you something better to lie in than this old thing.’

  She put on the lid.

  ‘Oh, she’s quite happy with it,’ said Ned.

  ‘She told you so, I suppose! Anyway, come on, it’s time you were in bed. Better hide Lady Daisy before Dad comes up to say goodnight. He’d have a fit.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to know, does he?’ said Ned.

  ‘Who doesn’t have to know what?’ said a voice just outside the door, and as Ned’s father came into the room, his mother, with one quick movement, slipped the box beneath the bed.

  ‘Just a little confidential matter,’ she said, as she made a show of arranging the bedclothes.

  ‘Secrets everywhere today,’ said Ned’s father in a mock-grumpy voice. ‘I suppose I shall be the last to know. Come on then, Ned, early bed for you.’

  ‘Can’t I watch some telly?’ said Ned.

  ‘Not tonight,’ said his father. ‘Tomorrow you can stay up and watch A Question of Sport downstairs.’

  ‘Upstairs,’ said his mother firmly.

  Later, when he knew his parents were safely settled below, looking at whatever programme they had managed to agree upon, Ned took Lady Daisy out.

  The previous Christmas a well-meaning aunt, knowing that he liked reading, had given him a pair of large wooden book-ends, carved in the shape of elephants. Ned had not quite known what to do with them, since his books were all happily arranged on shelves, but now he suddenly realized how useful they would be.

  He set them on his bedside table, and between them he stood Lady Daisy, firmly supported now on either side by an elephantine bottom.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘That was your mother?’

  ‘Yes. Wearing trousers, I’m afraid, Lady Daisy.’

  ‘I am becoming used to that. How short she wears her hair. Victoria’s mother’s was so long that she could sit upon it. She brushed it a hundred times every night. I have not seen your father, by the bye.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Though he may have seen me? Asleep, that is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would I be correct, Ned, in thinking that your father would consider that dolls are strictly for little girls?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Daisy. You would be right.’

  ‘What shall you do about that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Downstairs, Ned’s mother and father were watching a situation comedy, in which the situation was boring and the comedy just wasn’t funny.

  ‘That present that Mother gave Ned,’ said his father. ‘I wonder what it was.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  They watched a little longer, their faces expressionless, while the studio audience yelled with laughter.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ said Ned’s father suddenly.

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘What was in that box. I bet I know. I bet you all Lombard Street to a china orange, as Bulldog Drummond used to say.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘It’s simple. It was a shoebox. And what comes in shoeboxes? Answer – shoes. Or more probably boots. I bet she’s bought him a new pair of football boots.’

  ‘How clever you are,’ said his wife.

  Upstairs, Ned was saying, ‘D’you think I ought to tell Dad, Lady Daisy? Own up, I mean?’

  ‘You make it sound as if looking after me was a grave sin, to which you must confess,’ said Lady Daisy rather tartly.

  ‘Oh no . . . It’s just that Dad would expect me to have the kind of . . .’ he paused, not wanting to use the word ‘toy’.

  ‘. . . toy,’ said Lady Daisy.

  ‘. . . well, yes, that most boys would have. Some kind of action man like Rambo, or a funny animal like Garfield or Kermit. If he knew about you, he’d think I was a wimp.’

  ‘Rambo? Garfield? Kermit? Wimp?’ said the doll. ‘Have some mercy, Ned. These names are all double Dutch to me. But I do see your problem. Your father sounds to me very much a man’s man. No doubt Sidney grew up in that mould.’

  ‘So what should I do?’

  ‘My advice is twofold, Ned,’ said Lady Daisy. ‘First, I think that you should tell him. Secrets in a family are not good. Second, do not tell him yet. Wait for a favourable moment, one at which he might be especially proud of you, for example after an outstanding performance at some sport. In his admiration, he might be persuaded to overlook the fact that you have a doll in your room. That is all he need know, dear boy – that your grandmother, in a generous but possibly misguided gesture, gave you a doll, which you did not like to refuse and which you therefore felt you must keep in your room. Surely he cannot object to that?’

  ‘How clever you are,’ said Ned.

  ‘And as for your playmates,’ said Lady Daisy, ‘should you fear being thought a namby-pamby, why, it is not as though you were going to take me to school with you.’

  But, some weeks later, that is just what Ned did.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Project

  The very first day of the term Ned’s teacher, Miss Judge, had announced that the class project was going to be ‘Life in Victorian Times’.

  ‘It was all very different in those days,’ she said. ‘There are so many things that we take for granted now, which the Victorians didn’t have. No motor cars, for example, or only a few very early primitive ones, no aeroplanes, no television, no radio . . .’

  Ned’s hand shot up.

  ‘Yes, Ned?’ said Miss Judge.

  ‘But, please, miss, at least they had phones. The telephone was invented a hundred and fifteen years ago.’

  After this had been checked in the encyclopaedia, the teacher agreed that he was absolutely right. But she looked very surprised, and rather suspicious, so Ned decided he had better play things more carefully. Nevertheless, as the project progressed, Ned’s pieces of writing and Ned’s pictures and even Ned’s poetry (for he could not resist including ‘Here’s Lettie in her Coach and Pair’) were far and away the best in the class.

  ‘This is really very promising, Ned,’ Miss Judge said when the project was a month old. ‘You certainly have a feel for those times. I don’t know how you get all the details correct.’

  She would have known all right, if she could have been a fly on the wall in Ned’s bed-sitter of an evening, and heard Lady Daisy, propped on
Ned’s desk between her elephant supporters, giving him the benefit of her knowledge.

  One day Miss Judge handed out copies of a note for each child to take home.

  ‘What’s it about, Mum?’ asked Ned.

  His mother read it out:

  ‘Dear Parent,

  Class 2 are doing a project on Life in Victorian Times and we plan to have a display of material of that era. Any help that parents can give will be greatly appreciated. Books, toys, old photographs, clothes, household objects, etc. will be welcomed and great care taken of them. We should need the loan of them for the whole of the week before half-term.

  ‘Well, that’s an easy one for you, Ned. You can take Lady Daisy.’

  ‘Oh no, Mum!’

  ‘Why ever not? If it’s Victoriana that your teacher is looking for, then Lady Daisy will be the star of the show!’

  ‘But she’d be in there for a whole week!’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘She might get . . . damaged.’

  ‘Nonsense, everything will be taken good care of, Miss Judge says so. You’d be rather selfish if you didn’t take her – think how interested the other children would be, especially the girls.’

  ‘It’s not the girls I’m worried about,’ muttered Ned.

  ‘Ah, I see, it’s all your footballing chums you’re thinking about, poking fun at you for bringing a doll. Look, you don’t have to say it’s yours. Simply say that it belonged to your grandmother, which is true, in fact.’

  ‘Not “it”, Mum,’ said Ned. ‘“She”.’

  ‘OK. “She”. Well, it’s up to you, but I really think you ought to take her in to school.’

  I don’t want to, thought Ned. I don’t want to, one bit. Some of the boys won’t half take the mickey out of me. Especially Troy Bullock.

  Troy Bullock was the captain of the school’s First XI, who took pride in being a ‘hard man’ on the field and modelled himself on Vinny Jones. Ned was tall for his age (useful for a would-be England goalkeeper), nearly as tall as Troy, but he was slight by comparison. He could just hear Troy sniggering, ‘Ned’s got a dolly!’

  A possible way out occurred to him. Lady Daisy might object to the idea of going to school.

  ‘I should be most interested,’ said Lady Daisy that evening when Ned had reluctantly asked her how she felt about the whole business. ‘I should very much like to go.’

  ‘But how will you get any sleep? Miss Judge won’t let me put you in the box, I don’t expect.’

  ‘Sleep is not necessary to me, Ned, as it is to you. I am not capable of becoming fatigued.’

  ‘But I shan’t see you for a whole week!’

  ‘Yes, you will. You will not see me in the evening as you now do, but you will see me in the day as now you do not. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other.’

  ‘But I shan’t be able to talk to you.’

  ‘True, but the time will soon pass. Time does, I can assure you.’

  ‘You won’t speak, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But then what about my project?’

  ‘Your folder for the project is almost finished, I think. You must manage on your own for a while, as you did before I came. Why, I am quite excited, I declare! I used to attend Victoria in the schoolroom when she had lessons from her governess, but I have never been inside a proper school. Life is very hard there, I remember Sidney saying, with long hours of learning, and meagre food, and iron discipline. Sidney used to be beaten with a cane for the slightest misdemeanour. You must see to it, Ned, that I am placed upright in a commanding position, so that I may observe all that is going on.’

  Ned fired a last shot.

  ‘It will be awful without you,’ he said pitifully.

  ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ said Lady Daisy.

  The children of Class 2 were told to bring in their bits of Victoriana on the following Monday. Ned took Lady Daisy Chain to school carefully wrapped in tissue paper, inside a Marks & Spencer carrier-bag.

  ‘Will that be all right?’ he had said to her. ‘You won’t need your shoebox because you’ll be standing up all the time.’

  ‘But you wish me to be concealed during the journey to school?’ said Lady Daisy.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said Ned.

  He could just imagine meeting Troy Bullock and some of his cronies while he was carrying the doll in his arms.

  ‘I am perfectly agreeable, dear boy,’ said Lady Daisy.

  Was there a shade of amusement in her voice, Ned wondered?

  One by one any child who had brought something took it to Miss Judge to show her. She was delighted to find that there was a really good selection of objects.

  Most of them, like an old biscuit tin with a picture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on its lid, were genuine pieces of the period. One or two, however, were not; for example a 1952 Coronation mug, brought in by a girl who had got her queens confused.

  One of the first objects to be handed in was an antimacassar.

  ‘Gentlemen of those days,’ said Miss Judge, ‘used to smarm their hair with Macassar oil. So to keep the material of a chair from becoming stained and greasy, this would be draped over the back.’

  And then there was a host of other things – an oil-lamp, a flat-iron, a rolling-pin, a stone hot-water bottle, a clay pipe, a candlestick with a snuffer, a little network lady’s bag called a reticule, some books, some toys and some old brown photographs.

  ‘Wonderful!’ said Miss Judge when all these had been arranged. ‘Now, is that the lot?’

  All this time Ned had sat with the Marks & Spencer carrier-bag between his feet, Lady Daisy lying asleep within. I needn’t bring her out, he kept saying to himself. I can leave her in the bag and just take her home again after school and put her in her box. Mum will think she’s at school. But then he recalled Lady Daisy’s words. ‘I should very much like to go,’ she had said.

  He put his hand up.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ he said.

  If only he had handed Lady Daisy in early, or among the press of other children anxious to show the teacher their treasures, he would not have attracted so much attention. As it was, the eyes of the entire class were upon him as Miss Judge called out, ‘Bring it here then, Ned,’ and he marched up to her desk and handed her the carrier-bag.

  Reaching in and removing the tissue paper carefully, she took out Lady Daisy.

  ‘Oh, what a beautiful doll!’ Ned’s teacher cried, just as his grandmother and his mother had. ‘And look, her eyes open! Look, children! Why, that’s lovely, Ned, she’ll be the star of the show. I didn’t know you had a little sister.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Ned.

  Somebody giggled.

  ‘It’s your doll then, is it, Ned?’

  Everybody giggled.

  Ned hesitated. The teacher was holding Lady Daisy in such a way that the blue eyes were staring straight into his, and he knew, he just knew, that he should not deny his ownership. But his courage failed him.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘it’s not mine. It belonged to my grandmother.’

  ‘It must be very valuable,’ said the teacher. ‘And that applies to a lot of these things, children, so get it into your heads here and now that all these objects may be looked at, but not touched. The last thing we want is for something to be broken or damaged in any way. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Judge,’ everybody said.

  So now Class 2’s project on Life in Victorian Times was almost complete. The walls of the classroom were lined with the children’s written work and paintings, and the exhibits were all arranged on a long table, with Lady Daisy Chain standing proudly in the very centre. Nearly all the girls looked longingly at her, while the boys were most interested in other, different, toys – a pop-gun, a model of Stephenson’s locomotive ‘The Rocket’, a group of lead soldiers. They did not think to tease Ned about the doll – it wasn’t his, after all, but his grandmother’s. Ned thanked his stars tha
t Troy Bullock was in Class 1.

  Each day that week he came early to school, hoping to have a word with Lady Daisy before anyone else arrived, but someone always did.

  He waited impatiently for Friday, for school to finish, so that he could take the doll home.

  All might have been well had not Miss Judge, on Friday morning, decided to ask Class 1’s teacher to bring her children in to see the exhibition. Each item was labelled with its description and the name of the child who had provided it, so that at Lady Daisy’s feet there stood a small square of card reading:

  VICTORIAN WAX DOLL NED

  Troy Bullock stood in front of this, pointing and nudging his pals, Ned saw, and he quailed.

  All might still have been well had it not been raining hard all through lunch-time, so that it was too wet to go out in the playground.

  Choosing a moment when the teacher on duty was not around, Troy Bullock slipped into Class 2’s room.

  ‘Fancy Ned having a dolly!’ he said loudly, and he picked Lady Daisy off the table.

  ‘You’re not allowed to touch!’ cried some of the girls, but Troy took no notice. Instead he began to tip the doll slowly back and forth, making her eyes open and shut.

  Ned went hot and cold at the same time, with anger and also with fear, for he knew he was no match for the great Troy Bullock in a fight.

  ‘Here, stop that, Troy,’ he said in a croaky voice. ‘You might hurt her.’

  In answer Troy began to shake the doll faster and faster, so that the eyelids were in constant motion.

  ‘You want your dolly, Ned,’ he said, ‘you come and get it.’

  ‘It’s not his,’ said one of Ned’s friends. ‘It belonged to his grandmother, didn’t it, Ned?’

  The sight of poor Lady Daisy being manhandled, her eyes opening and shutting at high speed, was more than Ned could bear, and the cold fear went, leaving only the hot anger.

  ‘Yes, it did once,’ he said. ‘But now it’s mine. It’s my doll.’

  Troy stopped shaking Lady Daisy and put her down on the table.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he said, grinning. ‘It’s Ned’s doll. And only girls have dolls. So Ned’s a big girl.’