loved a human like that, thought Daisy sadly. If only Hamish ever showed a flicker of interest in her.
Clinging on to the banisters, Daisy staggered downstairs to an unrecognizable kitchen. Every surface was stripped and gleaming. Even the azalea Daisy’s mother had sent her from the alcoholic’s home looked quite sprightly. Drying-up cloths boiled briskly on top of the Aga, grey scum trembling on top. Humming ‘If Onlee’, Biddy was ironing a new emerald-green shirt which had somehow found its way into Hamish’s wardrobe. On the memo pad by the telephone, Biddy had jotted down Ajax, Domestos, Blue Loo, Shake and Vac, Freshaire x 3.
‘I can’t thank you enough for taking over,’ said Daisy as she collapsed into a chair.
‘Someone had to,’ said Biddy tersely.
‘Goodness, you iron well.’
Biddy had finished the green shirt and had started on Hamish’s Y-fronts. There was something obscene in the loving way she slid the hot iron with a hiss of steam into the crotch. Daisy could feel the sweat drenching her forehead.
‘I’m afraid I don’t bother to iron pants and socks,’ she mumbled apologetically. ‘Where’s Ethel?’
‘In her kennel outside, where she should be,’ said Biddy. ‘That’ll be Hamish.’ Her face really lit up as she heard wheels on the gravel.
Hamish, looking pale but elated, reeked of extra strong mints again.
‘You are a miracle,’ he said, kissing Biddy on the cheek. ‘Only you could get a polish like that on the front- door handle. We’ve sent your black shoes back to the manu-facturers and asked them to find an identical pair. Feeling better?’ he added turning to Daisy, but not looking at her. ‘You look
‘How was your day?’ asked Biddy. ‘Were you pleased with the rushes?’
‘Green grow the rushes oh, I love the lassies oh,’ said Daisy dreamily.
‘Better than I thought,’ said Hamish ignoring Daisy. ‘The bad news is that Melanie’s got flu, so we probably won’t be able to start shooting on Monday. The good news is that Wendy’s asked us to supper.’
Oh no, thought Daisy, I’m simply not up to it.
‘But Wendy’s been working all day,’ she protested. ‘She won’t want to be bothered.’
‘Course she will,’ said Hamish briskly. ‘I’ve accepted anyway. Good for you to get out, and Mother certainly needs a break.’
There was a mini-tantrum before they left because Gainsborough had shed ginger fur over the new green shirt which Biddy had ironed specially. Biddy also huffed and puffed because her stack-heeled brown shoes were less dressy with the red dress than the glace kid.
Daisy knew she should have washed her hair but she felt too exhausted.
If Wendy had been working all day, reflected Daisy, it had been on the dinner party. The flat was gleaming, full of freesias, more tinselled and red-ribboned than Santa’s grotto in a department store, and the food exquisite and consisting of all Hamish’s favourite things.
Hamish, who’d brought lots of bottles, kept leaping up and filling glasses and clearing away as he never did at home. Wendy, whom Daisy vaguely remembered as a raver in black leather and chain belts, was dressed in a grey wool midi-dress with a white collar. Her long, dark hair, so shiny Biddy might have been polishing it all day, was held back by a black velvet ribbon. All evening she ‘targeted’ on Biddy, flattering her preposterously, laughing at her frightful jokes and displaying an encyclopaedic knowledge of Hamish’s work.
‘
And for you too, thought Daisy, watching Hamish’s enraptured face. Hamish had been given to crushes throughout their marriage, but Daisy had never seen him so besotted. Nor did Wendy make the mistake of ignoring Daisy. She kept suggesting other food when Daisy couldn’t manage to eat anything, bringing her into the conversation as a coarse fisherman occasionally pulls on a spare rod.
‘What a lovely meal,’ said Biddy, folding her napkin.
‘As it’s Hogmanay I should have served you haggis,’ said Wendy, ‘but I couldn’t get one. “Great chieftain of the pudding race”,’ she added skittishly to Hamish.
‘I see you know your Burns,’ said Biddy approvingly.
‘The Hag is astride, this night for a ride,’ muttered Daisy.
‘I really like that young person,’ yelled Biddy, when Wendy, refusing any help, went next door to make coffee.
‘What a poppet,’ yelled Wendy, as Biddy went off to the loo.
Daisy only started getting jumpy when Wendy, having asked Biddy if she’d like some background music, put on ‘If On-lee’.
‘I really love this tune,’ Wendy said, dancing a few steps. Her eyes shining, she couldn’t have been prettier.
If on-lee, sighed Daisy, I was at home in bed, but I suppose we’ll have to see in the New Year. Hamish, however, was most solicitous about getting her home early and sending her straight to bed.
Next morning Biddy left, hardly saying goodbye to Daisy or Perdita, but kissing Violet and Eddie very fondly.
‘I feel so much happier about things now,’ Daisy heard her saying to Hamish.
Daisy felt jumpy, but for the next few days screaming matches over thankyou letters and getting three trunks packed left her little time to think. Neither Violet nor Eddie wanted to go back to school and loathed being parted from Ethel and the airgun respectively, but Perdita was worst of all, clinging round Fresco’s neck, sobbing and sobbing. ‘I can’t leave her, Mum, please let me go to the local comprehensive. I promise I’ll work and pass my O levels.’
Once they were back, it was reversed-charge calls three times a day to see if Fresco and Ethel and the airgun were OK, driving Hamish demented.
The Sunday after term began the sky turned the colour of marzipan and it started to snow. By teatime it was drifting. Appleford was completely cut off and Hamish couldn’t get home for ten days. It was very cold, but Daisy lived on tins, Ethel tourneyed with the drifts, and fat Gainsborough tiptoed along the white fences using his ginger tail as a rudder. Daisy also painted maniacally and joyfully. Brought up in London, she was unused to snow like this.
The thaw brought a telephone call from Hamish, saying snow had held up filming, but he’d be back at the weekend. More sinister, the postman got through again, staggering under a pile of brown envelopes.
Daisy left them for Hamish as usual. Then a letter arrived to both of them, complaining that none of last term’s school fees had been paid and requesting settlement for the spring and winter terms at once. Pickfords were also agitating to be paid for the move. Even more alarming, all the cheques Daisy had written for Fresco and Ethel and Hamish’s silk shirts came winging back. Daisy rang up the bank manager.
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing to honour the cheques, Mrs Macleod, and now you’ve sold the London house, no security.’
‘I’ll talk to my husband this evening,’ whimpered Daisy.
In panic, detesting herself, Daisy went to Hamish’s desk and went through his bank statement – ?35,075 in the red. How on earth had the penny-pinching Hamish managed that?
With frantically trembling hands, hating herself even more, Daisy went through Hamish’s American Express forms, and nearly fainted. The restaurant and hotel bills were astronomical, and he must have spent more at Interflora in a year than she’d spent on Perdita’s pony. She supposed leading ladies had to be kept sweet and suppressed the ignoble thought that Hamish had paid for all those freesias banked in Wendy’s flat.
There was also a ?500 bill from Janet Reger for December, of which Daisy had never seen the fruits. Her heart cracking her ribs, she looked at the minicab bills. Hamish, terrified of losing his licence, never drove if he’d been drinking. Daisy went cold. The December account was for ?450. Nearly every journey was to or from Wendy’s flat.
Hamish was always saying he had a bed in the office. Maybe he regarded Wendy’s flat as his office. She mustn’t over-react. But if she’d known how desperately they were in debt, she’d never have spent so much money at Christmas. She jumped guiltily as the telephone rang.
