A Better World than This Read Online Free Page A

see cobwebs festooning the corners of the whitewashed walls. There were baking tins piled high on shelves, and two long tables at the far end of the large room with open-tread stairs leading to an upper floor. In the light from a street lamp directly outside Sam saw the gleam of a piece of machinery clamped to the wall and guessed it was some kind of mixer for the dough. From somewhere deep inside Sam’s bank of memories he saw himself as a small boy helping the village baker with his round. Hanging the baskets on door knockers, baskets filled with orders of rock cakes, doughnuts, crusty loaves of bread and Atora beef suet wrapped in greaseproof paper. The crust of that bread, he remembered, had crackled and flaked in his mouth.
    ‘Now then. …’ He tightened his hold on Daisy, whispering into her hair. ‘What’s all this about. We’re too
old
for this kind of thing. We’re not a couple of kids snidging in corners. Are we?’ he said, giving her a little shake.
    ‘It’s nice in here, isn’t it?’
    Her voice was soft, light and dream-tinged. Like a woman’s when the act of love is over and she needs to be held for a while, Sam told himself.
    ‘I like it in here very early in the mornings, before the men come in, and the mad rush starts.’ Daisy’s breath was close to his ear. ‘I tried to tell you about this place last night, how I like being in here on my own, well,
love
being in here on my own really.’
    She could hear herself speaking in what her mother would undoubtedly have called her ‘poetry’ voice, but it wasn’t intentional. It was just the way she felt, all dreamy and far away. Her upturned face was gentled with love.
    ‘I come in here long before the knocker-up comes down the street with his long stick tapping on the windows to get folk up for the mill. I come in here before the chill has gone from the streets, but it’s warm and cosy quiet, with no sound but the cinders clinking down into the ashpan over there. And sometimes, where there’s a moon, it makes the oven door shiny and black as treacle. Like a Pontefract cake. And sometimes the policeman on his beat stops and knocks on the window. He comes in if it’s wet and shakes the rain from his cape. “Nasty neet, Daisy,” he says. “You mean nasty morning,” I say, and I make him a pot of tea. And when he goes I climb on that stool and look through the window to watch him go up the street, with the light from the lamp silvering the drizzle.’ She sighed. ‘Mornings can be very beautiful, Sam.’
    ‘You’re a funny one.’ Sam shifted his position slightly. Her voice … like warmed honey poured over silk, he decided. A voice to come home to, he told himself. ‘You’re a lonely girl, aren’t you, Daisy?’
    Her head came up so quickly it butted him on the chin. ‘Me? Lonely? What a daft idea! It’s like bedlam when the men come in, and goodness, you saw me in the shop, run off me feet. And I make enough noise for a dozen. I’m always being told that.’
    ‘
I’m
lonely.’ Sam gently pushed her head down again. ‘Most people are, if they admit it. It’s only the very lucky ones who find someone to share their loneliness. A friend. Or a lover.’
    Daisy shivered. His whole manner, his very way of speaking was new to her. No man from round here would have said the word ‘lover’, not in that way. Words like that were left to books or films, and yet Sam had just said it in ordinary conversation. She didn’t
know
him at all, and yet strangely she had no desire to know him as a friend. All she wanted was to love him. For him to be her lover. … She closed her eyes.
    ‘I wish we could stay here for ever.’
    Above her head Sam Barnet pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. He felt suddenly totally dispirited. What in God’s name was he doing? What in God’s name was he getting himself into? This wasn’t the kind of girl he was used to. Not a cheeky uncomplicated lass from the mill who would have gone out with him, said