A Better World than This by Marie Joseph

if she was on the deck of a ship watching the moon shining on the sea? Why did he feel so protective towards her? As if she needed shielding from all the hurts of the world. No one could do that. When it came to it we were all alone, like animals, fending for ourselves, and making the best of things. Working out our salvations and knowing that the paths we trod were the paths we chose. Of our own volition, God dammit.
    Almost as an extension of his own thoughts he went over to the railings and put his arms round Daisy, straining her to him, just as a fierce gust of wind, seemingly from Siberia, tore the ugly felt hat from her head, bowling it along in the darkness like a leaf before swooping it up and casting it into the darkness below.
    ‘I
hated
that hat,’ she shouted over the sighing moaning wind. ‘I didn’t suit it, and never have. I only bought it because it matched me coat, and because the lady in the Hat Market said it was just me.’ Spreading her arms wide she let the wind take her hair and whip it round her head like a nimbus. ‘How did she know what was just me when I don’t know meself?’
    ‘I think you
do
know.’ Sam pulled her to him again. ‘I think you know exactly what you are and who you are.’
    ‘Well, whoever I am didn’t suit that hat.’ Her laugh was the laugh he remembered from first seeing her, as unselfconscious as a child’s. ‘On a real summer’s day you can see Blackpool Tower.’ She pointed away from the town. ‘It looks a bit like a mill chimney, and when the sun shines,
really
shines, you can sometimes fancy you see the sea flashing like a silver needle.’ She lifted her face. ‘Sniff up, Sam, then lick your lips and tell me you can taste the sea. Oh, I
love
the sea. One day when I’m old I will live by the sea, an’ I’ll go to sleep at night with the sound of the waves in me ears.’ Turning suddenly completely round, she pulled him with her. ‘And that is the Corporation Park down there, and beyond that the town. If only it was light you could see the tall chimneys waving little banners of smoke.’ Again he was whirled round. ‘Back to the sea now, Sam. But before you arrive there are more than thirty miles of green fields and woods.’
    ‘With your hat whipping through them.’
    ‘Fetching up on the sands at Blackpool.’
    He hugged her close. He couldn’t help himself. She put her mouth to his and as the kiss deepened, he tasted the sweetness of her.
    ‘I’m getting better at kissing, aren’t I?’
    Even as she spoke the rain came swiftly, a cloud-burst directly above them, it seemed. Before they reached the road her hair was soaking wet, flattened to her head, a black rubber bathing cap. Sam offered her his own hat, his coat, anything, but it was obvious to him she didn’t care.
    The misery of his going had hit her with the force of the deluge of water cascading down from an unseen sky. Already the grids were overflowing, and the gutters ran like rivers. It was Hollywood rain, Joan Crawford in an oiled perm, with lipstick intact on her wide-gashed mouth, with a man beside her in a riding macintosh, wide-brimmed trilby lowered over his face, a strong arm round her as he urged her along so quickly it seemed as if her feet would leave the ground. ‘How beautiful you look in the rain,’ he would say. ‘All woman.’
    ‘You must have a hot bath as soon as you get inside,’ said Sam.
    ‘I won’t melt,’ Daisy told him, wondering if he knew that taking a bath meant bringing in the zinc bath from its nail on the backyard wall, heating the water up in the kitchen copper, then carrying it in pails through to the fire.
    As they reached the bottom of the slope and turned the corner, a tram was there, with the conductor standing on his platform, his finger on the bell.
    ‘Nice weather for ducks,’ he grinned. ‘Chucking it down in buckets,’ he added from his shelter. ‘Been for a swim in the park lake, have you, love?’
    Ignoring him, Daisy made for the