Liverpool Daisy Read Online Free Page A

combatants room. Iddy Joey climbed on to the table and stood with one foot on a loaf of bread to get a better view. But clear across the squawks of the women and the anxious murmurs of the rest of the family came Freddie’s voice, full of long experience of dealing with difficult customers and pathetically anxious to curry favour with his mother-in-law.
    “Dear Daisy, restrain yourself.”
    The crowd reluctantly made way for him as he came towards her with the calmness of the bishop himself. “You must be dreadfully tired. It is time people went home.”
    Daisy stopped, arm still raised, fist still clenched. Nobody but Freddie had ever called her dear, and it seemed to her that only Freddie, and, of course, Nellie, had her interests at heart.
    Meg, who hardly knew him, stopped in mid-shriek as if switched off. For a moment she gazed at him in dumb amazement and then she began to giggle. The giggle became a laugh. She threw herself upon John and howled with laughter. The other adults began to snigger and then to laugh. The children joined in with uncertain tee-hees.
    Dumbfounded at the unexpected hilarity, Daisy dropped her threatening fist. She looked at Freddie. Didn’t he mind being laughed at? Apparently not, because he was calmly folding up the will and gave no indication that he was perturbed by the mirth he had engendered.
    His wife, Maureen Mary, said with brittle brightness to the assembly, “Yes, it’s time for home — and I’ll take back me sheets and me candlesticks now Nan is laid to rest.” A tear trickled down her cheek as she picked up the bundle of linen from the back of a chair and took the candlesticks, encrusted with grease, from between iddy Joey’s feet on the table. She gathered up her little daughter, Bridie, a pretty picture in a pale blue satin dress and bonnet. She blew a kiss sadly to Daisy across the room and, her arms loaded with sheets and child, she nudged her aunt towards the door. “Come on, Anty Meg.”
    John opened the front door and a still giggling Meg was shepherded into the street. As the other visitors flowed out Maureen Mary turned and tried to get back in, but it was too difficult, laden as she was, and she shouted with a little catch in her voice, “I’ll come tomorrow, Mam!”
    Daisy who had been watching the sudden exodus with narrowed eyes, as she considered what she would like to do with Meg, smiled suddenly and nodded agreement.
    When the crowd had thinned, Nellie get up unsteadily from the chair on which she had been sitting.
    “Get down off that table, Joey,” she said ineffectually.
    Joey danced around, to the further detriment of the loaf of bread. A few odds and ends fell off the back of the table.
    George reached forward and caught his son by the back ofhis clothes. He lifted him bodily on to the floor and gave him a sharp slap across the head. “Gerrout,” he said.
    Joey howled as if he had been shot and fled to his mother, to hide his face in her black skirt and bellow like a young bullock.
    “You didn’t have to do that,” Nellie reproached her husband.
    “Och, he’s spoiled rotten,” retorted George. He picked up his jacket and swung out of the house after John.
    Nellie bent over to console Joey. “Never mind, luv,” she said. “Never mind.”
    Daisy, being more practical, reached over to the plate of cake still on the mantelpiece. “’Ere ye are, Joey,” she said, as she handed him a piece.
    Joey’s wails ceased immediately. He emerged from the folds of his mother’s skirts, stuffed the cake into his mouth and danced over to the door, through which Daisy could observe him skipping happily across the road to look out over the river.
    Nellie embraced Daisy lovingly. “I’ll come tomorrow,” she promised. Daisy smiled and kissed her, holding the tiny hands with their terrible, broken nails as if she could not bear to let her go. She led the frail little woman to the door, where Freddie stood running his trilby hat uneasily through his