Maisie went to bed early and, after leaning back and listening to the silence of her flat, she slept. The bell connected to the outside door began to ring just after midnight. Like a cat woken by a predator, Maisie was alert, running to the door while pulling on her dressing gown. She left the door on the latch and made her way with more caution toward the glass outer doors, standing behind a wall to view the visitor summoning her at such an hour. It was Priscilla.
Maisie opened the door. “Whatever is wrong?” she asked of her friend, her stomach knotted for fear of the answer.
“Get dressed, Maisie, there is no time to lose. There’s a taxi waiting to take us to Richmond.” Priscilla continued to talk while Maisie pulled on her walking skirt, a white blouse, warm tweed jacket, and a pair of brown walking shoes. “I received a telephone call from Margaret Lynch. Simon is not expected to last the night.”
Maisie nodded, feeling the tears prick her eyes. There was nothing to be done except follow Priscilla. She would think later, in the morning, when it was over. When it was finally over.
At the late hour traffic was light, ensuring an easy and swift drive to Richmond. Priscilla had linked her arm through Maisie’s as they sat, silent, in the back of the taxi. Maisie felt as if her journey were not through west London but instead through time, the veils of years past being drawn back, one by one, for her to look, to take some account of who she was, who she had been, and how she had come to this place now, a woman approaching her middle years who had kept the light of love alive—a love ignited when she was just eighteen—even though others had come to claim her heart. Who would she be without Simon, without the scar on her soul? What would have happened had they both returned from war, unscathed except by experience? Would there have been a fairy-tale ending, the glass shoe fitting perfectly? Or would the disparity in their stations have come between them? She drew her hand across the window, clearing it of condensation, and caught her reflection in the glass. She was her own woman now, not a girl in love. With his passing, Simon was setting her free, in his way. How might she be changed by his death, an event that had not come and gone, taking its place in her history, but had lingered alongside her like a weary shadow?
The taxi scrunched to a halt on the gravel, and Priscilla put her arm around Maisie as they entered the hospital. A night watchman, sitting at the reception desk, looked up from his newspaper.
“Can I help—”
“Mrs. Priscilla Partridge and Miss Maisie Dobbs, to see Captain Lynch. We’re expected.” Priscilla waved her free hand to indicate she knew the way, and together she and Maisie began to run down the corridor. They stopped outside Simon’s room.
“Alright, deep breath. Now, go in.” Priscilla pulled out her cigarette case and pointed toward the door. “I’ll be outside.”
Color from the exertion of running drained from Maisie’s face. She nodded, pulled at the hem of her jacket, ran her fingers across her hair, and opened the door.
Margaret Lynch looked up from her place, sitting next to her son’s bed. The staff nurse acknowledged Maisie with a brief nod and a watered-down smile, then left the room without speaking. Maisie remembered meeting Margaret Lynch for the first time, when Priscilla had taken her to a party Simon’s parents had thrown for him, on the eve of his departure for France. She was a woman of bearing, of understated elegance, with her aubergine gown and her hair drawn back in a chignon. She had greeted Maisie with such grace, as a friend of Priscilla Evernden. It was as she stood with Priscilla to watch the dancing that Maisie had looked across at her hostess and saw her gazing at her only son, saw her raise her hand to her mouth, her face filled with dread. Now, years later, her hair, still styled in the chignon, was gray, and she wore a woolen dress of pale blue which seemed to reflect the prominent veins at her temples. Her eyes were red rimmed, and a handkerchief was crumpled in one hand.
“I am so glad you’re here, Maisie. So glad you came.” She stood up and held out her hands toward Maisie, and Maisie leaned down to kiss her cheek, as if she were indeed the daughter-in-law she might have become, had the fates not ruled otherwise.
Maisie nodded, grasped Margaret’s hand, and walked to the bed. Simon’s breathing was even more labored than it had been earlier in the day. She helped his mother to the chair, then reached across to lay her fingers on his forehead. His eyes were closed but seemed to flutter as she touched him, though as she drew her hand away, there was no movement, no indication that he had felt her touch. She walked to the end of the bed and looked at the clipboard with notes attached. There was no reason to think he was uncomfortable while death made ready to claim him.
The staff nurse returned with another chair, and Maisie drew it close to Margaret. They sat for a while, both watching Simon, the rise and fall of his chest, listening to the breath catching in his throat, the sound reverberating into his lungs, before echoing back like a slow rattle.
“You’ve been good to come these past two years, Maisie.”
Maisie bit her bottom lip, once more at a loss to explain her earlier absence. “I—”
“It’s alright, my dear. I know, I understand. You were both so very young, you saw so much. I might have not been able to comprehend your not visiting when he first came home, but time has tempered me, has given me leave to appreciate how the war touched you, too.” She turned to look at Maisie, her eyes watery with age but her vision still acute. “I don’t know how I would have dealt with such a blow, had it been me. So, yes, I am glad you have come.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Lynch.”
“Things are very different than they were in my day,” she continued in a whisper, with respect to the hour and Simon. “And I confess, Simon’s father and I, though we thought you delightful, were rather worried—I shall be frank with you, Maisie, I am too old now to do otherwise—that you would not be suited to marriage with Simon. But it was wartime, and we loved our son, so we sought to do nothing until he was home again.” She shook her head. “Now, of course, I wouldn’t care whom he married, what he did, if only he were here and not like this.” She raised her handkerchief to her mouth.
Without giving a thought to protocol, Maisie placed an arm around the woman’s shoulder and allowed her to lean against her. “I know, I understand. We neither of us know what might have happened, but we are both here now, and we are here for Simon, for your son.”
Simon’s breathing became louder, his eyes at once wide open, as his body automatically responded to the pressure of his failing lungs. His chest raised up, twisting his spine, and he convulsed. Maisie stood up and held his shoulders down, spoke gently, though he could not hear, as Margaret Lynch wept aloud. “Simon. My son, my son . . .”
He became calm, and though he continued to breathe, in troubled raspy breaths that sounded like a barber sweeping a blunt blade slowly back and forth across the strop, he looked not at Maisie or his mother but at a place above and in front of him, staring wide at a vision only he could see. Then all movement ceased and there was nothing. No more abrasive breaths, no life in his eyes, just the shell of a man lost to war in 1917.
Maisie reached over and drew her fingers across his eyelids, then took his hands and rested them on his chest, as if to protect his heart. She turned to his mother. “Stay with him, Margaret, while I go to the staff nurse. And . . . don’t be afraid to talk to him, to say your final farewell.”
“What about you, Maisie?”
Maisie looked back at Simon. “I said my farewell this morning.” Her voice was low as she turned to face the bed where Simon lay. “It’s alright—we’ve said our goodbye.” She squeezed his cooling hand and left the room.