Daffodil Days

by Helen Bain

Genres: Biographical; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A stunningly inventive and poignant historical novel that follows Sylvia Plath through the final year of her life, told through the eyes of the people who knew her during her time in the English countryside.

In the early 1960s in a small English town, the church bells ring. The people go about their days, catching glimpses of one another.

There’s the local doctor, who knows more about his patients than he would sometimes prefer. There’s the young assistant at the dress shop, who understands that the ladies who come there for a new outfit are often hoping to find a new self. There are the men who ring the tower bells at the church three times a week, the notes, harmonious and clashing, rippling out across the rooftops of the town.

Among all these lives, one young couple moves into focus. New to the town with their small daughter, they have escaped London for a quieter existence at Court Green, the thatched house beside the church. The life they intend to build—out of secondhand furniture stenciled with hearts and flowers, expertly cooked suppers for weekend guests, and devotion to the work that matters to them both—will be a good and happy one.

The Daffodil Days depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th-century literature’s most infamous couple, primarily the wife: Sylvia Plath. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of this enigmatic writer, refracted through the rich inner lives of a rural community caught, if only for a moment, in her light. Here, Sylvia is capable and charismatic, vulnerable but strong, full of spirit.

For fans of literary and historical fiction, The Daffodil Days offers a poignant glimpse of a life reimagined. The lasting impression is not of what breaks us but what binds us: resilience, creativity, and love.

Release date: June 9, 2026

Publisher: Scribner

Print pages: 288

Sample

Chapter 1: Nancy Axworthy Closes Up the House 1 Nancy Axworthy Closes Up the House
Court Green, North Tawton

Thursday, December 13, 1962

She sits back on her heels on the wet bathroom floor. Her hands are cold and red and the flat of her palm hurts from the wooden handle of the brush. Nothing lifts dirt from lino quite so well as stiff fiber bristles.

There’s a strong smell of Clorox and the metal polish she uses on the taps, and the floor is dark and slick. Nancy Axworthy gets up, rubbing her knees, and hooks open the tiny window under the wedge of thatch. It’s a very grey day. The cloud was down on the tops when she walked through the town. And it’s cold—colder than this time last year. Half the milk froze in its bottle this morning and Walter took a slab of ice two inches deep from the horse trough. Snow this side of Christmas would be a trouble.

She lifts the heavy metal bucket of scummy water and empties it, crashing, into the bath before rinsing it, letting the clean water run over her hands. The scouring powder stings. It gets into every crack around her nails.

Don’t fuss, Mum, Maureen keeps saying. But she’s worried about ice on the paths and people not wanting to stay on for the dancing because of the roads. She never wanted a winter wedding for her daughter, but they can’t wait any longer, and she found some lovely angora cardigans at Colsons for the bridesmaids.

She puts the scrubbing brush in the bucket along with the bottles and carries it downstairs, setting it outside the scullery door. The kittens are crying from the back larder. She’ll do the passageway last thing before she leaves. Lino is a sight easier to keep clean than the cobblestones that used to run right the way along, front to back. In Mrs. Arundell’s time they went through the kitchen as well. That was a job; the dust settled against the tiny slanted sides so it wouldn’t lift with just a broom. Don’t worry, Nancy, the old lady used to say, I can’t see the dirt anyway.

It looks a different house now. Fresh paint, new floors. Sewing all those curtains. Bits of furniture found at auctions and brought home and polished up. All that money spent, all that time and trouble—and for what?

She takes the tin of Mansion polish and a duster and two cloths from under the kitchen sink, dampens one of the cloths well under the cold tap, and goes back upstairs to the spare room at the back of the house. She shakes out the checkered curtains and wipes dirt from the corners of the window frame. Below, the courtyard looks swept and bare. The grass is growing back between the cobblestones.

If Maureen had only waited a couple of months they could have had daffodils—a fat bunch at the end of every pew. The nice thing about daffs is that you can have a lot without looking showy. There’ll be daffodils to spare at Court Green if no one’s here in the spring. Or perhaps apple blossom—that beautiful pale pink and green. It’s unlucky to pick it but there’s often a branch or two that comes down. Maureen’s bouquet is going to be Christmas roses wound with ivy.

I suppose you’ll want holly in there as well, Nancy said tartly. Her daughter had just laughed at her and said that no one would be able to catch it.

She takes the duster over the bed frame and the black trunk. The threshold of the door is painted with a wreath of flowers and a pink enamel heart in the center; she fetches the damp cloth to wipe very carefully around it. Everything in this house got painted last spring. Old newspapers spread out in the stables, half the furniture dragged out there and painted white and decorated with red hearts and green leaves and yellow flowers. Chairs, tables, wastepaper baskets. Anything that wasn’t nailed down. Then she started on the doorways.

All or nothing, Winifred says. That’s Sylvia.

Nancy had known the house would be empty, but when she pushed open the heavy back door that morning and stood inside the passage, she wasn’t ready for how it felt. The silence was like an echo. She’d walked through the rooms one by one. The kitchen was cold—the Rayburn had been off for three days—and there were gaps all along the dresser where plates and cups had been taken down. In the little red front room Marjorie Tyrer’s brass tray table and coal scuttle shone in the dull December light. The playroom had the trestle table and chairs neatly lined up, rows of books on the shelves. There’s still a hole in the wall there where Nicky’s playpen was too close and he started digging into it. Got himself a nice little handful of caulk before anyone noticed. Oh boy, his mother would say.

She shakes the duster out of the window, leaving it open, and goes along the corridor to the front of the house. In the master bedroom the curtains are fastened back and a row of shoes is lined up under the window. She dusts the chest of drawers, and unclips the tin of polish, smearing some on the cloth and dabbing it lightly across the wooden surface before rubbing it in well. The dirt sticks in every tiny crevice of the metal handles; she goes over each one with the edge of her thumbnail. She runs the duster along the top of the picture frame containing the black-and-white drawing of the woman standing on waves and holding a rattle. An Egyptian goddess, one of the guests in the summer—the American man—had told Nancy. He and his wife stayed almost three weeks and it rained nearly every day, so much for an English summer. They were meant to be helping with the kids but they didn’t have the first idea and Kathy Kane got on everyone’s nerves. God, but that woman was a talker. Always on about her allergies when Nancy was trying to finish the kitchen floor.

She takes her dusters next door. They took the big rocking horse but the wooden doll’s crib is still in the corner, painted white with bluebirds with red wings and yellow feet, clusters of dots like berries and a sun with triangular orange rays. Next to it, lying on its side, is the little plastic doll in its bath that Nancy gave Frieda last Christmas. She picks it up and wipes it down and sets it on the shelf.

The study is dim because both sets of curtains are pulled. She rattles the wooden rings together and opens the windows; the casements are stiff from all that rain last month. There are newspaper cuttings stuck all over one wall and a poem pinned up—something about a hat. A vase of poppies and cornflowers has been left at one end of the long desk, dropping a circle of curling petals and pollen on to the smooth pale wood. She sets the vase on the floor by the door and sweeps the bits into the palm of her hand, throwing them out the window overlooking the top garden. They float down onto a little sapling underneath. Over in the churchyard the wind moves the high bare branches of the trees. The sky is flat and grey.

She takes the vase to the bathroom, tipping the inch of smelly water down the sink and picking the bits of stalk and leaf out of the plughole. There’s a pleasant smell of beeswax across the rooms upstairs, the faint tang of bleach lingering underneath. She’ll leave the windows open until she’s finished downstairs. Get some air circulating before it’s locked up for goodness knows how long. She doesn’t go upstairs to the study in the attic; she never did that room. Don’t even try, Nancy, Sylvia told her on her very first morning. You won’t be able to find the floor.

She fetches the vacuum cleaner and plugs it in, unwinding the cord and treading on the switch on the base. The high roaring starts up, the little pink-and-white globe twirling and moving obediently behind her, in and out of the rooms. Why anyone would leave their Hoover behind, Nancy doesn’t know.

Last Thursday, when she came up as usual, Sylvia had just got back from London. She had a lot to do, she said, not looking Nancy in the eye. She was dashing about, making time for all these things no one else would bother with when they were moving house. Plaiting onions and sticking handmade labels on honey jars and polishing her entire set of pewter. It was spread out all across the floor of the playroom. Nancy had gone upstairs to get on with her work. When she’d finished, and put the Hoover away, and left everything as it should be, she’d gone into the kitchen. Tins and boxes were scattered across the table next to a half-filled crate. Joan Webb’s strawberry jam with its smart looping handwriting was sitting smugly inside next to a packet of cigarettes. Sylvia always hated smoking.

Nancy had gathered her courage. She said, Maureen wanted me to ask…

Sylvia looked up from her list.

For the wedding—the table decorations. She wants evergreens. Holly. But she likes the one at the top here. The kind that’s striped green and white. Could they pick some?

Sylvia’s face softened. Of course, she said. Take all you need. I’m taking a bunch to London myself. I want to put it in my pewter for Christmas. And, Nancy?

Nancy looked back from the doorway. She’s beautiful, Sylvia, when she smiles. Her whole face comes alive: dark brown eyes under that cropped fringe and shining braided coronet. Wide mouth, neat little chin. She can’t see it herself—but people don’t, do they?

Use the Bendix. Won’t you? While I’m away. I can’t bear to think of it sitting here not being used.

The thump of the back door echoes from downstairs. Nancy toes off the machine and goes a little way down the stairs to see along the passage. Gilbert Foster is standing there, wearing that striped scarf he’s so attached to. He’s got one of his kids with him.

Hello, Nancy, he says. I didn’t know you’d be here.

I am.

I’ve come to do the cats.

I shut them in the back, she says. Don’t let them out.

She goes upstairs to finish the bedrooms. Even over the noise of the Hoover she can hear him crashing around downstairs with the cats’ bowls. She’ll have to do that floor over after he’s gone. She sighs and turns it off again, leaving it in the middle of the nursery. Downstairs, Gilbert is standing aimlessly in the passage.

I’ve fed the cats, he says eventually.

Nancy wonders where Gerald has got to. Into everything, that child. He’s sliced the top off his finger with a razor blade before; she doesn’t want to have to make a trip to the surgery. Marian’s due next month. Winifred says she’d better make this one the last; she had a hemorrhage when she was three months gone. Dr. Webb didn’t think the baby had survived but Marian said that when she felt her skirts getting tighter she knew it had. She opens the understairs cupboard and takes out the ash bucket.

We had a letter yesterday. Very funny. She locked herself out of the new flat as soon as she arrived. Had to get a gas man to jimmy the windows.

Excuse me, says Nancy.

He moves to one side, watching her take the bucket out to the courtyard. She knocks it out over the compost heap. The day is colder and greyer than ever. Gilbert has left the gate open. She comes back in and lifts the bucket into the kitchen sink, turning the tap on full to rinse it.

She turned up at ours very early on Monday to hand over the keys, he says, watching her. Marian thought she might be in two minds about going.

Nancy takes the dishcloth around the sink, wringing it out very tightly and hanging it over the tap.

I said she didn’t have to leave, Gilbert says, laughing. She’s a free agent. Especially now she doesn’t have a husband telling her what to do.

She fetches some newspaper from the pile in the scullery and puts it in the bucket with the shovel.

She told us to help ourselves to potatoes and apples and what have you.

You know where they are?

Oh yes.

She carries the bucket past him and along to the little front room. He follows. She rolls up the big rag rug and props it upright by the door, then kneels in front of the fireplace, unfolding the newspaper and spreading it out. Gerald sidles into the room holding a book, eyeing Nancy.

Is that the one you want, old man? Gilbert says, bending down. The Forest for the Trees. Very nice. She said we could borrow any, he tells Nancy. Doesn’t want them anymore, I suppose.

She knocks out the brush hard, pulls open the grate, and starts to shovel the gritty, pale brown ash into the bucket.

She asked me to get the cats fixed up, he says. Doesn’t want to come back to a house full of kittens.

I’m not surprised, Nancy says, brushing down the sides of the fireplace.

If she does come back.

He stands, looking out of the window, hands in the pockets of his jacket. Outside, the branches of the laburnum trees are bare. The orchard grass is long and unkempt, stretching across to the grey boundary line of the churchyard.

She’s only in London for the winter, Nancy says shortly. She’ll be back by spring.

I wonder. I had the impression she was quite sick of the town. Gave her bees away, didn’t she?

No. They’re here. Winifred’s keeping an eye on them.

She folds up the pile of ash carefully in the newspaper and puts the big misshapen parcel in the bucket, carrying it out into the passage and setting it on the front step. Then she fetches the vacuum cleaner, even though she hasn’t finished upstairs, and plugs it in.

Doing the whole house, are you? says Gilbert.

I am.

Even though it’s going to be empty.

That’s right.

Will you still work here? If she comes back?

Yes, she says, and switches the Hoover on. It roars into life. Gilbert lifts his hand and ducks his head, smiling his crooked smile over the noise. She hears him calling to Gerald, then the back door banging shut.

She vacuums the whole room, underneath all the furniture and along the skirting boards, and when she’s done it once she does it again. The scarlet carpet looks good as new. Shoes came off in this room, always. She carries the Hoover back upstairs to finish the nursery, moving the big chair and the doll’s crib into the center of the room so she can get right into the corners. With the hearts painted at the head and feet, the crib always reminded Nancy of the old nursery rhyme. Four corners to my bed, four angels round my head. She told Sylvia, and there was the idea that it might make a quilt, laid out in blocks like one of the lovely old American ones. So many other things got made in this house—always so beautifully done and always, always completed—that Nancy could picture it perfectly. But the quilt was never made. One of the London visitors—the short smiling man with pointy brown boots who dropped by one summer morning on his way somewhere else—spoilt the whole thing by telling Sylvia that the rhyme was really a prayer, in case the child never woke up again. Nancy was standing right there on the lawn in front of the house when he said it. She saw Sylvia’s face turn white. Nancy could have hit him.

The tube of the Hoover extends far enough to do the stairs but a good horsehair brush brings up the nap better. She starts at the top, kneeling on the step below to sweep along the brass stair rods and brush up the red pile of the carpet with short strokes. It’s cheaper than the one in the study but it still comes up beautifully.

She tires of things, that’s it. Decks this house out in red and twelve months later says she prefers blue. Not everyone has that luxury. Cast off your life like a big red coat that’s suddenly got too heavy and fly off to London with a baby under each arm. It makes Nancy so frustrated she can hardly think. Women can’t do that. She knocks the brush hard into the corner of the stairs, not being careful enough of the paintwork.

The back door opens and shuts and a voice calls, Hello?

Nancy calls, I’m here.

She carries on brushing, hearing brisk steps along the passage. Winifred Davies appears in the hall, her square, kind face familiar under the round brim of her blue nurse’s hat.

What a day, she says. I thought this mist was going to lift.

I doubt it. Are you doing the bees?

Yes, I just need to top up their solution.

The Rayburn’s off, Nancy tells her. You’ll have to use the hob in the back. Gilbert Foster’s already been in there, covering the floor in kibble.

Winifred looks at her. It seems as if she’s about to say something but then she turns and goes into the kitchen. Nancy carries on working her way down the stairs, hearing her filling the kettle and moving things around. When she’s got to the bottom she takes the dustpan through to empty it. Winifred’s bag is open on the kitchen table, a packet of castor sugar beside it. It’s like her to bring her own rather than rely on there being any here. She comes back in, looking around.

Got a Pyrex?

Nancy opens a cupboard and takes out the jug.

They went for her the other week, she says, handing it to Winifred. Stung all over.

They won’t do that now, Winifred says, measuring out sugar. It’s too cold.

Nancy doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t trust bees. From the scullery the kettle is making jerky puffing sounds. Winifred brings it into the kitchen and pours an inch of boiling water into the jug, stirring it briskly to dissolve the sugar.

This needs to cool, she says. Shall we have a cup of tea?

Yes, says Nancy. I’m about halfway.

She lifts two cups and saucers down from the dresser. There’s still some milk left from the weekend. They sit at the big round table. Winifred stirs the jug occasionally so the sugar won’t settle. Nancy checks the teapot.

I’m glad Susan went up with her, Winifred says. That’ll have made the difference.

She could only stay a day, says Nancy.

She’ll find someone else soon enough, says Winifred. It’ll be easier in London. She wants an au pair. German, so she can keep up her lessons.

Better than having it blasting out of the wireless like last spring. Who learns three languages at the same time, I ask you?

That’s Sylvia.

There’s a pause. Nancy pours the tea. The steam lifts into the cold room.

How are the wedding plans coming along?

Maureen keeps telling me to stop fussing. I’m worried about the cold. What if people go home early?

They won’t.

And one of the bridesmaids has gone and got herself a terribly strange haircut. Like a funny little helmet. I can’t think how it’s going to look.

The best thing about a winter wedding is the lack of competition, says Winifred. Everyone’s ready for a good dance after being cooped up over Christmas. They’ll expect it from your husband.

This is true: everyone knows Walter loves the big bands.

He’s insisting on doing the ringing, Nancy tells her. Before and after the service, wouldn’t you know.

Well, says Winifred. I suppose he wouldn’t want anyone else to do it.

I wanted him to walk out with me behind them like you’re supposed to. Instead he’s going to have to nip down the far pews and run out the back.

Can you walk out with Terence?

Yes, I’ve told him that’s what we’ll have to do.

Just remind him to take off his shirt.

I told him. Ring in your vest, I said. Just remember to put it back on before you walk your daughter up the aisle.

It’s a shame Terence doesn’t ring.

Walter never wanted it. One clanger in the family’s enough he says.

Winifred smiles. You’ll have time to get everything just how she wants it, she says. Now you’re not coming up here twice a week.

Yes. It’s a relief, I must say.

Winifred looks at her.

You know how she’s been, says Nancy. If I didn’t know better I’d almost say she was trying to be difficult.

She’s had a tricky few months. London might be good for them all. For a short spell.

They drink their tea.

Gilbert said he thought she was quite sick of the town. Dr. Webb said as much.

Well. They had a falling out, says Winifred. She was so cross about her thumb not healing properly and it upset him. You know what he’s like.

She said she felt like she was living on a potato farm with potato people. I heard her telling that friend of hers who came to stay.

She’s upset. She didn’t like the talk.

It’s just what people do, says Nancy. Look at Mary Day. She had to hold her head up all that time with her husband running around behind her back. The whole town watching to see how she was taking it.

I saw her and Bill the other day. They were taking her boys to Okehampton to go to the pictures. All standing at the bus stop, smiling away.

The rector doesn’t like it, says Nancy. He told Walter they don’t let divorced women in the Mothers’ Union.

He wouldn’t have dared say that in front of Bill, says Winifred. The church needs to get its act together. It’s good riddance to bad rubbish, getting rid of a man like Tom Day.

Nancy looks at her. No one quite knows what happened to Winifred’s husband. There was a rumor he never came back from the war, but Nancy suspects he was just a nasty piece of work she left behind in Lancashire. Young Garnett’s in London now, he’s training to be a police officer. Winifred wants him to get out and get on. She keeps herself busy with her Pekes and her bees and her nursing. I see them all come into the world, she says, and I see them leave it.

She told me to use the Bendix, Nancy says.

Well. That was thoughtful.

I hate to think of her having to lug bags round to the launderette. Those filthy streets. How will she manage with the pushchair?

Sylvia needs to work, Winifred says firmly. I said as much to her mother in my last letter. She’ll be back in the spring.

I’m worried, Nancy says; saying the words makes her throat feel full.

Winifred reaches her hand across the table and Nancy takes it.

She’ll be back. She’s got her bees waiting for her. Her apple trees. Her garden. She loves this house. You know how she feels about it. What was it she said to you?

Nancy pauses. This is my property.

There you are.

She gives Nancy’s hand a squeeze, then lets go. She peers into the jug. The sides are condensed with steam and the mixture is a thick white color. She stirs it again, tests the temperature with her finger.

That should do, she says.

She picks it up and goes squarely through to the hall. There’s the sound of her opening the cellar door and clicking on the light. Nancy can hear her talking to the bees.

She drinks off the last of her tea. Just a few weeks ago Sylvia was standing in that doorway, coming in from her morning circuit of the garden. She was in her big green corduroy coat, and her Wellingtons had leaves stuck to them, and she was holding a few long stems of honesty with the translucent white seed-pods that look like little moons. She was smiling.

I’ll miss my garden, she said. I do think of it as mine now. My property.

She sounded so American when she said it.

Nancy looks down at the cups and saucers, at her own red hands. Then she looks up at the big wooden dresser with its half-emptied shelves. There’s a pale rectangle on the wall next to it where the household calendar should be. She pours the last of the hot water from the kettle into the washing-up bowl and runs the cold tap, mixing in the detergent. Then she lifts all the remaining cups and plates down from the dresser and sets her bowl of soapy water on the base, clambering up on a chair to wipe down the long wooden shelves. The top one is terribly dusty. Funny—from up here the kitchen looks cleaner, in that odd way rooms do when you’ve stopped for a minute. When you’re in the middle of a job and noticing every mark, everything looks filthy. It can get you down. But then you turn your back and when you look at it again it almost sparkles. Everything always looks worse before it looks better. She has to keep telling herself that. She rubs harder at the marks on the wood.

Everything had been running like clockwork in the autumn after Winifred found Susan to come and help with the kids. Nancy wasn’t my Nancy to Frieda anymore, it was all Susan. And Sylvia was having her riding lessons, with Joan Webb driving up to the house to collect her in those sunglasses of hers, smiling her reserved smile. No one else in the town had managed to crack that woman—she can’t keep help in the house and it’s not hard to see why—but she and Sylvia became friends. The vicar had thought she should be friends with Sylvia Crawford because her three were the right ages, but anyone could see they weren’t cut from the same cloth. Sylvia said, I think he thinks it will be tidy because we’ve got the same name, and made one of her faces. She’s got just the right sort of face for it. So mischievous even Nancy would have to laugh. Frieda would shriek with laughter. Do it again, Mummy, she’d cry. She’d spank Sylvia and say, Naughty Mummy.

Women have more fun when the men aren’t around. That’s what Nancy’s mother always said. Like in the war. It was terrible, of course, but at the same time you’d have these moments, helpless with laughter over things men would never find funny at all. Her aunt who didn’t have children came down to stay and help, and the very first morning she fell in the cesspit in the garden. They were crying with laughter.

Winifred comes back with the empty jug.

They’re doing nicely, she says. She packed them up beautifully.

Will they come through?

No reason why not. As long as the solution stays topped up. It’s a strong colony, the queen’s young. I’ll come back in the week to check they’re warm enough.

They’re saying we’re in for a cold snap.

Can’t be as bad as last spring.

You never know. Bill says the berries up at Barton farm are as thick as anything.

Well, Winifred says. I’ll let you get on.

She smiles and puts on her hat, picks up her bag. The door swings heavily shut behind her. After a few moments comes the sound of her car starting up outside the kitchen window.

Nancy dries the shelves with the yellow patterned tea towel and puts everything back, lining it all up together so the cups and plates don’t look so lost. She sets the big china biscuit barrel squarely in the center. Then she folds up the tea towel and opens the left-hand drawer of the dresser to put it away. The drawer won’t close. She tries to pull it out but it sticks; there’s something caught. She opens the cupboard underneath and reaches up behind, easing out a stiff white piece of material. It’s a tapestry canvas, a quarter stitched. A gift from one of the visitors last spring—a London couple, very glamorous. Left the spare room in a pretty state, spilt powder all over the dressing table.

She stands there a moment, looking at the cream paneling and pink-washed walls, the big round table they always ate at. The clock ticks. The room is darkening. Next week will be the shortest day of the year.

She puts the tapestry back in the drawer and closes it. Then she goes through the scullery to the back. The kittens are asleep on a piece of sacking in the corner. She lifts it, the light bundle of black and white and tortoiseshell fur weighting the center, and carries it into the scullery and sets it on the floor by the vegetable rack.

She goes back into the larder and looks at the Bendix. She’s used it before, but only ever with Sylvia there to make sure the dial has been turned to the right setting. It was only Sylvia who watched the demonstration. They send someone to the house when you buy it to show you how to use it properly.

Nancy wipes the machine down. The porcelain top, the shining sides, the six little raised silver letters. There’s a smear on the bottom corner—she stoops to rub it off, and stands back to look at it. It sits there: square, white, gleaming. She glances around the room once more, then closes the door behind her. She locks it, and slips the key on top of the doorframe. Sylvia will know to find it there. She’ll want to put on a load, the minute she gets back.