Daughter of the House. Rosie Thomas

you, Miss Wix.’

      She could almost believe this, because he seemed suddenly to be in a much better humour. A slow tide of blood rose from her throat to her cheeks. The warmth of the bar made her nose run and her chilblains itched almost unbearably. She had to sniff, and clench her fists to stop herself clawing at her knuckles. Gil Maitland took out a folded handkerchief and handed it over. It was thick and starched and almost certainly monogrammed.

      When she tried to hand it back he said, ‘Please, keep it.’

      There would be plenty more handkerchiefs where this one had come from, she thought, laid in a tallboy by a laundry maid overseen by the valet. From this single detail she found she could imagine all the ease of Gil Maitland’s life. With Jinny Main and their other friends she would have dismissed him as the enemy, but now she felt oddly benign towards him. He was only a man, another human being, and his high assurance didn’t repel her in the least.

      The exact opposite, in fact.

      She wanted to laugh, from amusement and happiness, and he saw it and now he did smile. Gil Maitland would not miss much, she realised.

      ‘Well, Miss Wix. Who are you and what do you do?’

      Because he asked questions that were sufficiently interested without being over-inquisitive, and because he listened to her answers, she confided far more about Lennox & Ringland and her family and the Palmyra than she would ordinarily have done. Mr Maitland smoked two cigarettes, gold-tipped with black papers, and drank his beer.

      ‘Now it’s your turn. Who are you?’ she asked at the end.

      ‘I’m afraid I have nothing so exotic to tell.’

      Nancy had never thought of her background as anything of the kind, and the notion was surprising.

      All in all Gil Maitland was a surprising person.

      ‘I am just a businessman,’ he added.

      ‘No, that’s not fair. You let me babble on for ages so you should tell me your story in return.’

      Was she being rude? Nancy wasn’t sure. She just wanted to go on sitting here, looking at him and talking.

      There was the cleft in the cheek again. ‘I am afraid of boring you. What would you like to know? My grandfather made his fortune importing Indian cotton and setting up Manchester factories. My father was a chemical engineer, and he developed and patented the Maitland Process.’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Can you really be interested in all this? The Maitland Process is a method by which large quantities of fabric can be cheaply and permanently dyed and printed.’

      ‘I see.’ She could imagine, at any rate.

      ‘I am an economist. I have broadened the scope of our businesses and I am investing in new methods of manufacture. Maitland’s creates employment and generates wealth, you know. Perhaps you disapprove of capitalism?’

      ‘Of course I do.’

      After a moment Gil Maitland laughed, and so did she.

      ‘I’d have been disappointed to hear otherwise,’ he said.

      She would have liked to begin a debate, as she had done several times in this very pub, with such a plum representative of the other faction. She was disappointed when she saw the chauffeur discreetly approaching.

      ‘Excuse me, Mr Maitland. Just to let you know the car’s running again, and the road is open.’

      Did she imagine it, or was Gil Maitland also disappointed?

      ‘Thank you, Higgs.’

      Mr Maitland helped her into her coat and she did her best to fix her hat. His eyes were steady as she twitched the hopeless brim.

      ‘I hope you will let me give you a lift?’

      Nancy buttoned her gloves. She was trying to work out how old he was. Perhaps in his mid- to late-thirties, she decided.

      ‘Well … thank you. I’d rather like a ride home in a Daimler. I’ll be able to tell my father all about it.’

      The big car glided up Faringdon Road. Perched in the leather interior Nancy wondered what it would be like to be married to a man like Gil Maitland. He hadn’t mentioned a wife, and she had deliberately not asked him.

      It would be rather wonderful, she thought.

      For the first time, Eliza’s perennial advice to look for a rich husband made sense. Fortunately the darkness hid her blazing cheeks.

      Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, she told herself. That’s not what you want at all.

      The car drew up much too soon beside the canal and Higgs opened the passenger door for her.

      ‘Thank you. That was very interesting,’ she told Mr Maitland as she stepped out.

      ‘It was interesting for me too. Goodnight, Nancy.’

      The car slid away. It was still raining.

      Goodnight, Gil, she whispered to herself.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      Puddles of molten metal lay on the steps of the house. It was only rainwater caught in the worn hollows of the stone, but ever since she could remember she had thought it looked like mercury in the lamplight. Devil used a phial of mercury in one of his illusions, and when they were small she and Cornelius had loved the way the metal broke up into tiny globules before a twitch of the glass saucer collected it into a seamless pool again.

      Smiling at this memory as well as with the residual pleasure of her encounter with Mr Maitland, Nancy put her key in the lock. The door swung open into the quiet house.

      She took off her coat and shook it out before draping it on the hall stand. Droplets darkened the dusty runner. Rubbing her inflamed knuckles, she made her way down a flight of stairs to the kitchen. It was empty but the room was warm at least. This was no longer the steamy domain of the cook and housemaid. Peggy was at home in Kent with her widowed mother and almost as soon as the war started Mrs Frost had left to work in the munitions.

      Nowadays Eliza and Nancy ran the household between them. Devil spent long hours at the Palmyra, Arthur was still abroad and Cornelius – Nancy’s lips tightened – Cornelius was not likely to care whether or not the steps had been swept or if the butcher’s boy had brought the wrong order yet again.

      She flung open the door of the iron range and stoked the fire. She thought what a great deal of making and tending fires must have gone on all through her childhood, yet she had never paid any attention to the work.

      There was a saucepan pushed to one side of the hob and she peered at the contents. Enough of an Irish stew remained to make a meal for the three of them if she added some more spuds and a few carrots. The situation was really quite promising.

      Nancy went up two flights of stairs and knocked at her mother’s door.

      Eliza had been reading. She took off her spectacles and laid them on the table, pinching the bridge of her nose and blinking. Her dark hair had turned grey and the hollows in her cheeks had deepened. Eliza still drew glances in the street, although she claimed not to care in the least about her appearance. Whether she did or not she had retained her theatrical way of piling on colour on colour, twisting a pair of necklaces together and sticking a discarded bird’s feather in a hatband. These days she looked rare, and not a little forbidding.

      ‘I thought you might have gone out with your friend Jinny.’

      When Cornelius first came home, Jinny had called several times to sit with him. She understood something of what he must have experienced, and Cornelius would sometimes talk to her when he could speak to no one else. Eliza had been grateful for this intervention – grateful for anything at all that seemed to help her son – but she still