Liverpool Daisy by Helen Forrester Page A

loftily. “It’s outof fashion. Be back in a minute with me ladder and me paste. I’ll need some hot water to mix the paste.”
    “I know that without being told,” responded Daisy tartly. “And I don’t believe you about the blue — you couldn’t have looked.
    Bill Donohue was making for the door in an effort to avoid an argument, but was stopped in his attempt to escape by Daisy barking, “And don’t go so quick. Wait a minute. I want the ceiling done as well.”
    He turned slowly round, very surprised. He viewed her with distrustful, watery blue eyes. “It’ll cost yer — let me see, it’ll cost yer another shilling for plain whitewash.”
    It was Daisy’s turn to be affronted. “Mr. Donohue,” she said with huge dignity, “Have I ever failed to pay you?”
    Bill teetered slowly back and forth on his heels while he considered this. “No,” he agreed. “But it must be all of eight years since I done a room for you.”
    “You don’t need to remind me,” Daisy snapped. “I know when our Tommy died.”
    “Well, have you got enough for the ceiling?” inquired Bill bluntly.
    Daisy went to the fireplace where her stockings still dangled like a pair of dried snakes. She reached up and produced two half-crowns from under the clock. She held them up for her visitor to see. Then she plunged her hand into her apron pocket and pulled out another shilling. “’Ere ye are.”
    Bill touched his forelock respectfully, took off his cap, scratched his head and replaced the cap. “Have to go and buy some whitewash,” he announced. “Back in half an hour.” He stopped half way out of the door. “I’ll do the ceiling first. Need hot water for the paste later on.”
    Daisy nodded proudly and put the six shillings back under the clock.
    He was back before she had finished eating her breakfast of tea, bread and margarine, in front of the newly made fire. Thefire was not burning very well because of the huge pile of cinders under it.
    “Room empty?” inquired Bill.
    “There’s a bed and a chest in it.”
    “Better get them out afore I start with the whitewash.”
    Without asking permission, he took his pail and the packet of whitewash into the scullery. After a moment there was the sound of splashing water as he mixed the whitewash, combined with the faltering strains of “The Roses of Picardy”. Bill Donohue prided himself on knowing the words of more songs than anybody else in the neighbourhood. He had a radio and he was fond of saying that he listened to it intelligently.
    “Holy Mary!” exclaimed Daisy in exasperation as she hastily swallowed the last bit of crust, put her teeth back in and hauled herself out of her chair.
    Half way up the stairs, she stopped to allow a spasm of headache to recede. While it slowly passed she remembered for a second the young sailor who did not know how with a woman, and her irritability vanished. She was chuckling to herself as she entered her mother’s room.
    The silence of the room struck her forcibly. Her chuckles ceased; the young sailor was forgotten. While she was downstairs she could have the illusion that her mother was quietly sleeping in the bedroom; now, faced with the empty bed and the need to clear it, she had to recognise again that she was alone. Slowly the tears came, accompanied by great hopeless sobs. Instead of having someone to lean on, to advise her, to bully her into staying on her feet when life seemed impossibly hard, she herself would have to be the adviser, the kind helper, the referee of family quarrels; hers would be the knee on to which grandchildren would climb to be comforted, hers would be the shoulder on which the women would weep out their bereavements and all the myriad sorrows of being mams.
    “Aye, Mam,” she whispered brokenly, “I don’t know whether I can do it.”
    And it seemed to her, as she stood leaning against the door jamb, that she heard again her mother giving her what-for, as she called it, for standing around and