corridor, then made her way to the living room without taking off her coat. She took a matchbox from the mantelpiece and lit the gas fire, then moved to the windows and pulled down the blinds.
The compact kitchen, which was situated to the left of the area that would one day accommodate the dining table and chairs, was already fitted with a brand-new Main stove and a wooden table, as well as a kitchen cabinet. The deep, white enamel sink had one cupboard underneath and the bottom half of the walls were decorated in black-and-white tiles all the way around the kitchen. Maisie opened the cabinet, took out another box of matches and lit the gas ring under a tin kettle already half full of water. As the heat filtered upward from the kettle, she held her hands open to the warmth for comfort.
“Blast, it’s cold in here!” Though she could single-mindedly rise above many deprivations, as she had in France during the war, there was one thing that Maisie found hard to ignore, and that was the cold. Even as she set about making tea, she would not take off her coat until after she had sipped the first cup. Reaching into the cabinet again, she pulled out a tin of Crosse & Blackwell oxtail soup, which she opened and poured into a saucepan, ready to cook. Admonishing herself for not going to the grocers, she gave thanks for a half loaf of Hovis and wedge of cheddar cheese. And, because it was winter, a half-full bottle of milk set by the back door was not yet sour.
Later, with the drawing room warmer and a hearty supper inside her, Maisie sat back to read before going to bed. She picked up a book borrowed from Boots, where she had stopped to browse the lending library earlier:
Andrew was a kindly man, a good person, full of humor and energy, and she knew he wanted to marry her, though he had not proposed. There were those—including her father and Lady Rowan—who thought that, perhaps, her heart still ached for that first love, for Simon Lynch, who lived through each day in a coma-like shell of existence, the result of wounds sustained in the war. Maisie suspected that Maurice Blanche knew the truth was somewhat more complex, that it was not her heart she was protecting, not the memory of a love lost. No, it was herself. Her independence was gained early, more by default than design, and as time went on, like many women of her generation, her expectation of a certain freedom became more deeply ingrained. Her position, her quest for financial security and professional standing, were paramount. There were those who floundered, women who could not step forward to the rhythm of a changed time, but for Maisie the composing of this new life was to a familiar tune, that of survival—and it had saved her, she knew that now. Since the war her work had been her rock, giving structure and form to life so that she could put one foot in front of the other. To marry now would be to relinquish that support—and even though she would have a partner, how could she step away from her buttress if there were an expectation that she give up her work for a life in the home? How could she release her grasp? After all this? And there was something else, something intangible that she could not yet define but knew to be crucial to her contentment.
It was clear to her that she must call a halt to the relationship, allow Dene to meet another. However much she liked him, however many times she felt that they might be able to consider a future together, she knew that the very likable, happy-go-lucky Andrew Dene would ultimately want more than she might ever be willing—or able—to give.
Maisie sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb. Yawning, she opened the book again, not at the first page, but at a place in the middle. When she was young, when the urge to learn gnawed at her as if it were the hunger that followed a fast, there was a game that Maurice, her teacher and mentor, had introduced to their lessons—perhaps at the end of their time together or to reignite her thoughts following a weighty discourse. He would hand her a novel, always a novel, with the instruction to read a sentence or a paragraph at random, and to see what might lie therein for her to consider. “The words and thoughts of characters borne of the author’s imagination can speak to us, Maisie. Now, come on, just open the book and place your finger on the page. Let’s see what you’ve drawn.” Sometimes she found nothing much at all, sometimes dialogue of note. Then, once in a while, the short passage chosen moved her in such a way that the words would remain with her for days.
Pointing to a sentence at random, she read aloud, her voice echoing in the almost empty, still-chilly room. “‘Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul…a living thing new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.’”
Maisie closed her eyes and repeated the words. “New and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable….” And she knew that she would rest little that night. Already it was as if Nick Bassington-Hope were beginning to speak to her. Even as she slept, she would strain to hear his message.
Four
Maisie and Billy arrived at the office at exactly the same time on the following morning.
“Mornin’, Miss. All right?”
Pulling her scarf down to her chin so that she could be heard, Maisie stamped her feet on the front step, put the key in the lock and pushed open the door. “Yes, thank you very much, Billy. How’s Lizzie?”
Billy closed the door behind him and replied as they made their way upstairs, “Still not well, Miss. Running a bit of a temperature, I’d say, and the poor little mite just spits out ’er food. Doreen bought a bit of brisket yesterday, put it in a soup to go round everybody, and Lizzie wouldn’t even take some of the broth.”
“‘Go round everybody’?” Maisie hung her coat on the hook behind the door, as did Billy. “You make it sound like a tribe!”
“Aw, it’s nothing, Miss, not any more than anyone has to put up with these days.”
Maisie stood in front of Billy’s desk as he placed his notebook on the polished oak surface and reached into his inside jacket pocket for a pencil.
“Is there anything wrong? Look, I know it’s not really my business, but are you stretched a bit?”
Billy would not sit down until Maisie had gone to her desk and taken a seat. He shook his head, then explained, “Doreen and me always thought we were lucky, you know, with a two-up, two-down for just the five of us. Reasonable landlord into the bargain. The nippers’ve got a bedroom, we’ve got a bedroom, and with cold running water, we don’t ’ave to walk down to the pump, not like a lot of ’em round our way.” He reached for the tray, ready to make a pot of tea. “Doing well, I am, thanks to you, so we’ve even been able to afford a few extras—a bit of beef every now and again, a toy each for the kids at Christmas….”
“What’s happened?”
“A few months ago, my brother-in-law—that’s Doreen’s sister’s husband, he’s a carpenter—lost ’is job. It got bad for ’em, they ’ad to move out because there weren’t money for the rent and they were feedin’ their boy and girl on bread and Oxo water—and there’s another one on the way, y’know, making it all the worse for ’em. So, Jim reckoned there’d be work in London, and they turned up wanting somewhere to live. Now they’re sleepin’ in one
