A skeleton staff had lived at 15 Ebury Place, and Maisie knew that she would miss the young women who worked below stairs, though Eric, the footman-cum-chauffeur, had said she should bring her motor car to the mews regularly for him to “have a look at, just to make sure she’s running smoothly.” But for two months now, she had been living at her new flat in Pimlico, chosen not only for price but for its proximity to the water, the river that ran though London and that Maisie loved—despite her friend Priscilla, who referred to the Thames as “swill.”
She had traveled by underground railway this morning instead of driving the MG, so she returned the same way this evening. The cold, the damp and thick yellow smog conspired to nip at her ears, her lips, gloved fingers and even her toes, so she pulled her hat down even lower, navigating her way from the station to the new block of flats by following the flagstones underfoot. Designed with an optimism that was extinguished before construction was complete, the four-story building housed some sixteen flats. Each end of the building was curved to reflect a fascination with ocean travel fashionable in the 1920s, when the architect first sat at his drafting table. Enclosed service stairwells to both the right and left of the building were made brighter by porthole windows, and in the center, a column of glass revealed the inner spiral staircase for use by residents and guests. The accommodation requirements of a well-heeled resident had been in mind, one who would pay a good rent to live in an area that the developer thought “up and coming,” yet the building was still barely half occupied, either by owners who, like Maisie, had seen an opportunity to buy, or by tenants now renting from an absentee landlord who had stretched his resources to acquire four apartments on the top floor.
Turning her key in the lock, Maisie entered the ground-floor flat. Though not a palace, it was deceptively capacious. A corridor gave way to a drawing room with plenty of room for a three-piece suite and, at the far end, a dining table and chairs—if, of course, Maisie had owned a three-piece suite and dining table with chairs. Instead, an old Persian carpet, bought at an executor sale, half-covered the parquet floor, and two Queen Anne chairs with faded chintz covers were positioned in front of a gas fire. There were two bedrooms to the left of the hallway, one larger than the other and separated by a bathroom. A box room to the right was probably meant for storage, as it housed the gas meter. Maisie had set a stack of coins by the meter, so that she never had to grope around in the dark when the power went out.
Only one bedroom had a bed and, fortunately, the flat was already equipped with some new Venetian blinds, the sort that had suddenly become rather popular a few years earlier. Maisie sighed as she felt the radiator in the 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: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. She flipped open the cover, pulled her cardigan around her and began to read. Distracted, Maisie only read for a page or two before setting the book down and leaning back to gaze at the white-hot gas jets. Amid the activity of the day, she had neglected to write to Andrew Dene, the man she had been walking out with for more than six months now. She knew full well that she had failed to write because she was bothered, very bothered, by what she should do next.
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.