Candles in the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page B

that she had never loved her daughter like she did her granddaughter, her overriding disappointment at her own long-awaited child’s being a girl instead of the boy she had wanted for her husband only abating to some degree when Mary had redeemed herself by producing one baby boy after another. And such is the inconsistency of human nature that Nellie had never thought it ironic that she should now love Daisy with what amounted to devotion, whereas her five surviving grandsons held little interest for her.
     
    By the time George and Tom pushed open the door of the cottage the thaw which had been heralded by some of the old-timers - who considered themselves weather experts - was busy melting the ice and snow outside to thick slush and mud, something Daisy hated. Twilight had long since fallen, and inside the oil lamps had been lit.
     
    Daisy was sitting working at the net on the stool they kept for such a purpose, Nellie was dozing in her bed on the other side of the room, and the smell of the evening meal hung in the air. The mellow light from the lamps and the soft glow from the range showed the living room’s meagre furniture to its best advantage. This consisted of a square wooden table covered with oilcloth around which six straight-backed chairs were placed, a wooden saddle devoid of cushions which stood flat against the wall opposite Nellie’s low platform bed, and a smaller table to one side of the range upon which sat the pots and pans and big black kettle.
     
    Daisy jumped up at the men’s entrance; a sleety rain had been drumming at the windows impatiently for the last hour or more and she knew they must be wet through. ‘You got her ready for tomorrow, Da?’ Her father’s boat, like so many, had been pummelled viciously throughout the winter, but the last fishing trip had been the worst yet. It added insult to injury that most of the fishermen had been forced to work repairing the damage to boats and nets throughout the next day which had been the calmest for some time.
     
    ‘Aye, she’ll do.’ George was a man of few words but his smile was tender as he looked at his daughter. He was not a God-fearing man like some in the village who would no sooner have missed the Sunday meeting at Whitburn church than ceased breathing, but he believed his Daisy was a gift from the Almighty right enough, and made sure he thanked Him for her daily. And he knew his love was reciprocated. Daisy might be close to her granny - and that was good with Mary being taken when the lass was nowt but a wee bairn - but the feeling between him and his last child was something rare and precious.
     
    In spite of his being away for days and nights on end, it had always been him Daisy had run to when she’d hurt herself as a bairn, even when Mary had been alive. Him she’d told her secrets to, him who had received her baby kisses. He knew their Tom thought he was soft the way he was with the lass, but George didn’t care. He hadn’t cared from the day she was born and had gripped his finger with her tiny hand. He thought a bit of his lads, aye, and still mourned the two who had never reached their first birthday, but Daisy provided a light and joy in his soul that no one else ever had.
     
    ‘There’s your dry clothes in the scullery an’ the meal’ll be ready when you are.’
     
    ‘Right you are, lass.’
     
    George nodded at Nellie who was now sitting up in the bed as he walked across the room followed by his youngest son. As Tom passed his sister he tweaked one of her shining braids of hair, saying, ‘I hope you’ve mended that net to my standards, little ’un,’ which Daisy answered by sticking out her tongue at him.
     
    Once the scullery door was shut she busied herself setting three places at the table and heating a little more broth for her granny. She didn’t attempt to get the creosote off her hands, knowing from experience it would take a good while with the blue-veined soap and the scrubbing brush in the