A Better World than This by Marie Joseph

Woolworth’s.’
    Behind the store the Tower climbed majestically into the sky. From close up they could see the lift ascending, and the iron lace network of galleries. A crowd of children with clinking buckets and spades charged in front of the car, causing Sam to brake sharply.
    Dorothy leaned across Martha to watch a little girl with dress tucked into her knickers walk bare-footed over to the steps by the railings, holding fast to the hand of a boy carrying a shrimping net.
    ‘Donkeys!’ Jimmy shouted. ‘Can I go on a donkey, Dad? Can I have some ice-cream? Can I, Dad?’
    Meshed into the web of holiday traffic, Sam pulled into the side and told them to get out of the car and wait for him, just over there, by the man with the deckchairs.
    ‘He’s gone to park the car in a safe place.’ Jimmy passed on this information with an air of importance. ‘Mr Evison would kill him if it got scratched.’
    Holding on to the massive handbag, Martha teetered sideways to the deckchair man in his peaked cap with his leather bag swathed across his chest. She wasn’t going to say anything, definitely not going to spoil anybody’s pleasure, but the car ride had made her feel distinctly funny. Now the wind was getting at her through her coat, giving her a prickly sensation when she caught her breath. The sun might be shining, oh aye, she’d grant you that, but the wind had an edge to it like a bread-knife. In spite of all the silly beggars walking about with next to nowt on. Women with angry Vs of sunburn at the necks of their print dresses, and men with bald heads who would suffer for it tomorrow.
    There was a tight feeling in her chest as if a hand was scrunching it up. She should have stopped at home instead of gallivanting when she wasn’t fit. She shot a baleful glance at Daisy leaning over the railing as if she was on the deck of an ocean liner, lifting her face and getting her hair blown about any old how. Happy as Larry, the silly girl, thinking that man was going to marry her, when her mother knew he’d never leave his wife.
    What did Daisy know about men? If one hung his trousers on the bedpost she’d think he was just going for a swim. Flinging her hat over the windmill for a man with less life in him than a tramp’s vest. Martha had Mr Samuel Barnet weighed up all right. Polite he may be – she’d grant him that – and kind to a point, but he was only out to feather his nest, like the rest of them.
    He was going to hurt Daisy and hurt her bad. Martha knew that for sure. And there was nothing she could do about it. Look at those children, down on the sands when their father had told them to stay put. She narrowed her eyes at the sight of Jimmy down on his stomach like a mole, scrabbling in the sand with his fingernails. And his sister shoving her frock into her knickers and whipping her sandals off. Now Daisy was down there with them, on her knees, laughing. At that moment, a child herself.
    She would make such a grand mother. … Martha, who never cried, felt the prick of tears behind her eyelids. Why had her daughter got missed when there were married women with faces like rock buns and natures to match? The bag was dragging at her arm, but she wasn’t going to put it down, not with that shifty-eyed weasel of a deckchair man giving her funny looks. Men? She’d shoot the lot of them, given the chance.
    ‘Why don’t you sit down, Mother?’ There was an expression of genuine concern on the deckchair man’s face as he pointed to a chair by the railings. ‘I won’t charge you if you’re just waiting for someone.’
    To his astonishment, Martha clutched the portmanteau-sized bag to her chest, wrapping both arms round it, glaring fiercely at him through the handles.
    ‘That’s me daughter,’ she hissed. ‘Down there, and her friend’s here, coming along the front. You thought I was on me own, didn’t you?’
    Bewildered, the man went back to his post, shaking his head and hitching at the leather straps