Maisie coaxed the story out of her. It was typical. The man was an upholsterer, respectable and prosperous working class. He had courted her and they had talked of marriage. On warm evenings they had caressed each other, sitting in the park after dark, surrounded by other couples doing the same thing. Opportunities for sexual intercourse were few, but they had managed it four or five times, when her employer was away or his landlady was drunk. Then he had lost his job. He moved to another town, looking for work; wrote to her once or twice; and vanished out of her life. Then she found she was pregnant.
“We’ll try to get in touch with him,” Maisie said.
“I don’t think he loves me anymore.”
“Well see.” It was surprising how often such men were willing to marry the girl, in the end. Even if they had run away on learning she was pregnant, they might regret their panic. In Rose’s case the chances were high. The man had gone away because he had lost his job, not because he had fallen out of love with Rose; and he did not yet know he was going to be a father. Maisie always tried to get them to come to the hospital and see the mother and child. The sight of a helpless baby, their own flesh and blood, sometimes brought out the best in them.
Rose winced, and Maisie said: “What’s the matter?”
“My back hurts. It must be all the walking.”
Maisie smiled. “It’s not backache. Your baby’s coming. Let’s get you to a bed.”
She took Rose upstairs and handed her over to a nurse. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “You’ll have a lovely bonny baby.”
She went into another room and stopped beside the bed of the woman they called Miss Nobody, who refused to give any details about herself, not even her name. She was a dark-haired girl of about eighteen. Her accent was upper-class and her underwear was expensive, and Maisie was fairly sure she was Jewish. “How do you feel, my dear?” Maisie asked her.
“I’m comfortable — and so grateful to you, Mrs. Greenbourne.”
She was as different from Rose as could be — they might have come from opposite ends of the earth — but they were both in the same predicament, and they would both give birth in the same painful, messy way.
When Maisie got back to her room she resumed the letter she had been writing to the editor of
She had not been sure how to go on, but the arrival of Rose Porter had given her inspiration.
The editor would probably delete the words “in a certain condition” as being vulgar, but Maisie was not going to do his censoring for him.
She was interrupted again by a knock at the door. “Come in,” she called.
The woman who entered was neither poor nor pregnant. She had big blue eyes and a girlish face, and she was richly dressed. She was Emily, the wife of Edward Pilaster.
Maisie got up and kissed her. Emily Pilaster was one of the hospital’s supporters. The group included a surprising diversity of women — Maisie’s old friend April Tilsley, now the owner of three London brothels, was a member. They gave cast-off clothes, old furniture, surplus food from their kitchens, and odd supplies such as paper and ink. They could sometimes find employment for the mothers after confinement. But most of all they gave moral support to Maisie and Rachel when they were vilified by the male establishment for not having compulsory prayers, hymn-singing and sermons on the wickedness of unmarried motherhood.
Maisie felt partly responsible for Emily’s disastrous visit to April’s brothel on Mask Night, when she had failed to seduce her own husband. Since then Emily and the loathsome Edward had led the discreetly separate lives of wealthy couples who hated each other.
This morning Emily was bright-eyed and excited. She sat down, then got up again and checked that the door was firmly shut. Then she said: “I’ve fallen in love.”
Maisie was not sure this was unqualified good news, but she said: “How wonderful! Who with?”
“Robert Charlesworth. He’s a poet and he writes articles about Italian art. He lives in Florence most of the year but he’s renting a cottage in our village; he likes England in September.”
It sounded to Maisie as if Robert Charlesworth had enough money to live well without doing any real work. “He sounds madly romantic,” she said.
“Oh, he is, he’s so soulful, you’d love him.”
“I’m sure I would,” Maisie said, although in fact she could not stand soulful poets with private incomes. However, she was happy for Emily, who had had more bad luck than she deserved. “Have you become his mistress?”
Emily blushed. “Oh, Maisie, you always ask the most embarrassing questions! Of course not!”
After what had happened on Mask Night, Maisie found it astonishing that Emily could be embarrassed about anything. However, experience had taught her that it was she, Maisie, who was peculiar in this respect. Most women were able to close their eyes to just about anything if they really wanted to. But Maisie had no patience with polite euphemisms and tactful phrases. If she wanted to know something she asked. “Well,” she said brusquely, “you can’t be his wife, can you?”
The answer took her by surprise. “That’s why I came to see you,” Emily said. “Do you know anything about getting a marriage annulled?”
“Goodness!” Maisie thought for a moment. “On the grounds that the marriage has never been consummated, I presume?”
“Yes.”
Maisie nodded. “I do know about it, yes.” It was no surprise that Emily had come to her for legal advice. There were no women lawyers, and a man would probably have gone straight to Edward and spilled the beans. Maisie was a campaigner for women’s rights and had studied the existing law on marriage and divorce. “You would have to go to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court,” she said. “And you would have to prove that Edward is impotent under all circumstances, not just with you.”
Emily’s face fell. “Oh, dear,” she said. “We know that’s not so.”
“Also, the fact that you’re not a virgin would be a major problem.”
“Then it’s hopeless,” Emily said miserably.
“The only way to do it would be to persuade Edward to cooperate. Do you think he would?”
Emily brightened. “He might.”
“If he would sign an affidavit saying that he was impotent, and agree not to contest the annulment, your evidence won’t be challenged.”
“Then I’ll find a way to make him sign.” Emily’s face took on a stubborn set and Maisie remembered how unexpectedly strong-willed the girl could be.
“Be discreet. It’s against the law for a husband and wife to conspire in this way, and there’s a man called the Queen’s Proctor who acts as a kind of divorce policeman.”
“Will I be able to marry Robert afterwards?”
