i think she loved him. if mrs. patmore hadn't tried to force it, and if the war hadn't begun so soon, it would have happened naturally. poor daisy. she's just confused.

XXX

We are a liars, because

the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,

whereas letters are fixed,

and we live by the letter of truth.

The love I feel for my friend, this year,

is different from the love I felt last year.

If it were not so, it would be a lie.

Yet we reiterate love! love! love!

as if it were a coin with a fixed value

instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.

She lies awake, staring into the blackness above her. She has to get up in a few hours - it's plain silly to stay up all night thinking, but she can't help it. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees him, his uniform all neat and tidy and that grin he always has when he looks at her. He's different, somehow, changed; he's not just William anymore. He's something taller, bolder. There's a confidence to his step that he didn't have before and a strength in his gaze. He doesn't duck his head as much now, even when she knows he's feeling shy. And it makes her go over all queer-like, thinking about this new William.

She's never kissed a boy except him, though she'd wanted to sometimes. It had been different than she'd expected. His lips were soft, and his hands were big and warm on her face. He's real, she'd thought, stunned, and the idea still knocks her brain for six. Right now, he's breathing and dreaming and living. He might even be thinking, too. He might even be thinking about her.

She doesn't love him, she thinks. Mrs. Patmore shakes her head whenever Daisy tries to explain, and that's for the best, really, because she's not sure how to put what she knows into words, anyway. When he's gone, she's even less certain. He turns into someone else when he's gone, a not-William in her imagination who she could love. But then he comes back, and he is William, only now he's closer to the not-William, and oh, it makes Daisy's head hurt, puzzling it all out.

Mrs. Patmore is so set on her pretending to love him. She pushes them together like dough, kneading and pulling and pounding, but it just makes Daisy want to hide in a corner and cry. She loves William, but not that way, only maybe that way, but only sometimes, and does it count if it's only late at night or when she sees Anna and Mr. Bates? It's too many ifs to be love, Daisy thinks. Or is that what love is, a giant, scary if?

She wishes she could love him as much as she is supposed to.

XXX

poem by david herbert lawrence