Chapter 4.
Over the next couple of months we tried a succession of housekeepers. None of them lasted more than a few weeks. One of them, Mrs Cassidy, drank all the time and the rubbish bin was full of clanking bottles and cans. She was quite nice, actually, and was happy for us to do whatever we wanted to. She even managed to keep the place tidy after a fashion which suited Eddie and me quite well. She tipped all the clean washing in a huge pile in the hallway once a week for us each to sort through, which meant that we left it there and would grab stuff as we needed it when we walked past. We thought that was a really good idea although Mum would have had fourteen fits at the sight. The meals were a bit haphazard though. Mrs Cassidy started off with nice things like roast dinners with apple crumble for dessert, but after a couple of weeks the pile of bottles in the bin grew and we were lucky to get cheese on toast. And that was usually burnt. Dad put up with it until he found her passed out on the kitchen floor one afternoon. She had spent all the housekeeping money on a large bottle of cheap gin and then finished the bottle. He waited until she recovered then told her not to come back. I think he was using an agency to find these people and I didn’t fancy being the person he spoke to on the phone about it. When Dad did stop being apathetic he tended to get very loud and angry with people who annoyed him.
The next housekeeper had a bratty little pre-schooler with her who made more mess than her mother cleared up. Her name was Gloria, the kid I mean, and she got into everything. She ruined half a dozen of my books by scribbling on them with felt pen and even tried writing on the walls. Fortunately that wiped off but her mother didn’t even tell her off for it. She said Gloria was being ‘creative.’ if I went around being creative like that I would have been grounded for six months. Gloria became more creative every day and we got into the habit of shaking our shoes upside down before we put them on after Eddie found a half eaten marmite sandwich in his one morning. Gloria’s mother shifted all the stuff higher out of reach, which meant that we couldn’t find anything. Even Dad was annoyed when he spent half an hour looking for the toothpaste one night before discovering it on the bathroom windowsill. But he would probably have put up with that if Gloria hadn’t been creative with Dad’s work papers and computer one day. He’d had to go out to meet someone about a work thing and Gloria climbed onto his chair. She deleted a heap of stuff on the computer and crashed it completely by playing with the buttons and turning it on and off. She then drew scribbly pictures over his carefully typed notes. This made Dad so furious that he gave her mother notice on the spot when he came home and it was baked beans again for the next few nights.
Miss Morrison was the last straw. She was a timid, scrawny woman with big thick glasses on a thin beaky nose. She used to jump if she heard a loud noise and cringed if we raised our voices. She crept around the place quietly and didn’t upset anybody. She even kept the house clean despite the mess we all made. But she couldn’t cook at all and the meals were nearly as bad as Dad’s. Her specialty was a thin grey stew that was boiled so long it no longer had any flavour. We politely made suggestions for other meals.
‘What about macaroni cheese and steak, Miss Morrison? That would be a wonderful meal.’
‘Or meatloaf.’
‘Mum has heaps of recipe books she wrote herself. You could try making some of those.’
Miss Morrison would sigh, ‘Oh dear, that does sound like a good idea. I’m not sure if I could manage it, though.’ Then she’d cook stew again. Sometimes she made dumplings but they were so heavy they sank like stones in the stew and looked so grey and tough that even Dad refused to try them.
‘At least she doesn’t drink gin so the housekeeping bill hasn’t gone up,’ Dad said gloomily one night.
‘It’s awful, Dad. I think I’ll stay and have tea at Becky’s house every night. I can’t stand this,’ I protested.
‘You can’t do that,’ Dad fumed. ‘I don’t want Becky’s mother thinking I can’t afford to feed you.’
‘Well I’m not coming home to this muck every day.’
Dad sighed and Eddie nodded in agreement. We put up with Miss Morrison until the end of that week then finally she left of her own accord. I think it was because Eddie had started jumping out at her from behind doors saying ‘boo.’ Miss Morrison would scream and clutch her chest before smiling weakly and scuttling away.
It was quite a relief when she had gone and we lived on takeaways for a while and our clothes all got filthier and filthier as no one was prepared to do the washing. One day Dad suddenly made a decision.
‘I’m going to ask your Aunt Daisy to come and stay,’ he said briskly, in a rare moment of efficiency. ‘I’m not getting any work done and we’ll all end up in the poorhouse at this rate.’
‘Who on earth is Aunt Daisy?’ I asked. Neither Mum nor Dad has any sisters and this was the first we had heard of her.
‘She is more a sort of cousin by marriage,’ Dad explained. ‘She wrote to me the other day saying that her house is being demolished to make way for a motorway project and she wants time to look around for somewhere else to live. She ought to go into an old people’s home but she doesn’t feel ready for that. So having her here will be doing her a favour as well as helping us out.’
‘Good idea,’ I agreed. I had visions of a dear little old lady who would cook us wonderful meals and shower us with affection.
‘I’ll help you move your things into Poppy’s room,’ Dad said to Eddie.
We both gaped at him.
‘What? Why?’ yelped Eddie.
‘Because we need the room for Aunt Daisy. You and Poppy can share and there’s nowhere else.’
Eddie and I were both furious about this. Not because we minded sharing a room with each other so much, but on principle. We had always had our own bedrooms. When I tried to explain this to Dad he wouldn’t listen.
‘It’s either that or you will share with Aunt Daisy,’ he told me firmly.
‘I’d rather have Eddie,’ I said dubiously.
For once I made the right decision so Fate isn’t always unkind.
Aunt Daisy arrived on a Saturday morning. Dad had gone to pick her up in the car and they turned up right on lunchtime. Eddie and I went out to the car to meet them and immediately wished we hadn’t. Aunt Daisy was horrible. She looked like a sweet little old lady, complete with flat black old-lady shoes and a sensible grey skirt and pale blue cardigan. She even had improbably silver-blue hair and spectacles, but when you looked closely you could see she had piercing little beady eyes that bored into you like gimlets. Actually I don’t know what a gimlet is but if it sounds horribly painful then that’s what Aunt Daisy was like. She looked all around her and sniffed as if to show us that our place wasn’t up to much. She insisted on holding onto my arm as she climbed out of the car and that’s when I first realised she was nasty.
She pinched my arm and said, ‘not much muscle there. You’ll get fat one of these days, my girl.’ That made me loathe her instantly. She tweaked a piece of Eddie's hair and jeered, ‘far too long. You look like a girl.’ That didn’t exactly endear her to Eddie, either.
The worst part was that Dad thought she was okay. From the minute Aunt Daisy arrived she could do no wrong and we were the ones who were constantly in trouble. If Aunt Daisy quavered that lifting the groceries was an awful strain then Eddie was told off for not doing it for her. If Aunt Daisy murmured that she’d really prefer our beds to be made each day then I was the one sent to make them.
Eddie and I couldn’t understand it.
‘It’s like she’s some awful witch and she’s put a spell on Dad,’ Eddie complained.
‘I think it’s because she’s old,’ I told him wearily. I’ve noticed that. When anyone says something rude everyone is appalled but if it’s an old person they’re allowed and everyone thinks they’re eccentric. Or they excuse it by saying, ‘old so-and-so is too old to change. You’ll have to put up with him or her, they don’t mean any harm.’
But Aunt D
aisy was truly ghastly. She liked nothing better than to read the death notices in the paper and cackle over all the ones she knew. She would hang around the gate waiting for the paper boy to arrive then snatch the paper and scurry back to the house with it.
‘I see Maude Moorhouse has died. I never liked her and now she’s dead and I’m still alive. That will teach her to criticise my garden. I have outlived her! Hah!’ she’d gloat, from the best armchair facing the TV. Not that it mattered where she sat. Aunt Daisy didn’t like TV, which meant that the rest of us hardly ever got to watch it. That suited Dad fine. He’d pushed bits of furniture around to make a sort of cave at one end of the living room and he slunk in there every day and half the night to work. He even had the phone in there with him and our friends very rapidly cottoned on that we couldn’t talk on the phone any more. My tentative request for a mobile met with a snarl and I had no hope of buying one myself. Dad hadn’t given us any pocket money for months and went all injured and poor looking if I asked for money for school trips.
Aunt Daisy was hard of hearing. At least, she claimed to be hard of hearing, but we reckoned she only used it as an excuse when it suited her. She could hear the fridge door open from three rooms away and tell us off. She could hear us if we tried to sneak outside when we were supposed to be doing our homework or tidying our rooms. But she couldn’t hear us if we asked her to do something.
‘Aunt Daisy, my PE gear is still muddy and I told you I needed it for today.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear you, dear.’
She was also highly qualified in the art of complaining. She’d say to Dad, ‘I don’t wish to complain, but…’ and then go on to complain about something we’d done or hadn’t done. Dad would apologise to her and tell us off which made us mad.
‘I don’t wish to complain, but Eddie hasn’t made his bed this morning. Of course I will do it myself but I’m not getting any younger and I may not manage to cook the tea as well.’
‘Eddie! Go and make your bed at once.’
‘But Dad…’
‘Do as you are told, Eddie.’
Aunt Daisy complained to the postman about the way he put the letters in the box and if he was even a minute later than she thought he should be. She complained to the milkman so much that he refused to deliver stuff any more and Eddie and I had to buy the milk on the way home from school. She complained to the council about the noise if there were any roadworks near our house and complained to the police about the speed of the cars that went down our street. She complained to the neighbours that their TV sets or children made too much noise and generally made herself unpleasant to everyone.
Aunt Daisy didn’t appear to get on with anyone so at least there weren’t any other old ladies cluttering the place up, but she never went out much either. She ordered the groceries by phone, the same every week. She complained to the delivery people about the price but fortunately they grinned and ignored her so at least we were fed. But the meals were so boring. We knew what day it was by the smell. Monday mutton stew, Tuesday sausages, Wednesday meat loaf and so on. We would have known what was for tea anyway, as we had to peel all the vegetables and cut up the meat and do everything under her critical eyes. Then she sat back and took all the credit for cooking the meals and slaving over a hot stove. Eddie and I thought that was totally unfair. We tried to point out to Dad that we were doing all the work but he didn’t want to know.
‘I’m glad you are helping Aunt Daisy,’ he muttered and dived back to his computer.
At least Eddie and I learnt how to cook. I reckoned I could make meatloaf and stew in my sleep after awhile and Eddie was a dab hand at chicken casserole and baked potatoes. After tea Dad made us do all the washing up, which annoyed us, as the dishwasher was still broken.
‘There’s nothing wrong with washing a few dishes,’ Aunt Daisy cackled. ‘When I was a girl we had to chop up a pile of firewood and heat the water on the coal range before we could wash the dishes. And what’s more, we did it with a smile.’
I suggested that if she enjoyed it so much I would be happy for her to do my share but Dad frowned at me and Aunt Daisy immediately went all feeble and said she was getting too old for that sort of thing now. She was good at using her age like that. Dad kept telling her what a marvel she was whenever she did anything and she went all pathetic and old looking if there was any work to be done while we were around. Especially vacuuming. She would heave a great sigh and say things like,
‘I’m not as young as I was. This cleaner is very heavy.’
So Eddie and I would be told to vacuum our own rooms then Aunt Daisy would insist we did all the rest of the house as well. We never had any spare time any more, what with school homework as well as housework. Aunt Daisy claimed to be too old to hang out washing or even to iron the clothes. If we asked her to do anything she said,
‘I might be dead this time next year.’
This made whatever we’d asked her seem totally unreasonable, so naturally we ended up doing it ourselves, but we privately christened her Lazy Daisy, which seemed to sum it up.
Aunt Daisy made a fuss about being old and feeble but she could move faster than I could if she wanted to answer the phone or the door. She was such a busybody. I gave up having friends home to play because she practically gave them the third degree asking questions about everything they did. Then she’d embarrass me by telling them what I was like as a baby.
‘Oh are you going to eat another pear, Poppy?’ she said one afternoon, when Becky had come over to play. ‘I remember when you were little that they gave you awful hives. Maybe you’d better show me your chest so I can see if you’re getting any more.’
‘Horrible old witch,’ I muttered, as Becky nearly choked trying not to laugh.
‘And I don’t think you’d better eat that banana,’ she’d tell Eddie kindly. ‘I remember the time you ate a banana and vomited all over the floor. You wet your bed that night, too. You were a very difficult child.’
Eddie gave up having friends over as well.
Aunt Daisy made no secret of the fact she thought children ought to go to boarding school. We thought if Dad heard that too often he might cave in, so we stayed out of the way and tried to be good.