Daughter of the House

At last the war to end all wars came to an end.

After the armistice Cornelius finally came home. Arthur also survived, although he remained in France with his regiment. Edwin and Rowland Shaw were among the many thousands of men who did not come back. The landscape of the Uncanny was thronged with lost and dead men, but if her cousins and others she had known were amongst them Nancy did not distinguish them. It was like being a mechanical conduit for images that were distressing but not connected to her, and for this she was deeply grateful.

Recalled to the present by a nudge from Jinny, Nancy collected herself. ‘What were we saying?’

Jinny said gently, ‘How’s your brother?’

‘Not bad, thank you. Some days better than others.’

Some days for Cornelius were very bad.

‘Is there any more tea in that pot?’

Nancy sloshed thick brown brew into their cups.

‘Why don’t you come out with us tonight, Nance? Me and Joycey and some of the others are going to have our tea at Willby’s and then quite likely a half-pint at the Eagle.’

Nancy liked poached eggs on thick slices of buttered toast, and the pleasant heat in the neighbouring saloon bar afterwards when Jinny’s friends crowded round a beer-ringed table to argue about communism or rights for women. The war had changed the group’s political objectives, as it had changed everything else, because women had the vote now – or some of them did.

‘There’s still a lot of work to be done,’ they agreed.

For the last two years the group had been all female, but just recently one or two soldier boyfriends had reappeared. The men perched suspiciously on the edge of the circle and their presence changed the whole atmosphere.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t tonight. Ma’s expecting me home.’

‘Fair enough. Better get back to it, I suppose.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

Miss Dent was at her typewriter. The keys clacked like hailstones on cobbles and the carriage return pinged every few seconds.

Mr Lennox strolled out of his office.

‘Find me the Platt correspondence file, Miss Wix, please.’

She knelt at the lowest drawer of a tin filing cabinet and extracted the folder. His shoes looked as though someone polished them every morning and she wondered whose job this might be. Most certainly Mr Lennox did not shine his own shoes. There weren’t many domestic servants these days, but perhaps his wife did it for him.

It was twenty to six. Miss Dent collected Mr Lennox’s signature on a handful of urgent letters. ‘Shall I take those down to the post?’ Nancy asked.

Five minutes later she had completed her errand and was free to make her way home. Although it was an easy bus journey to Islington from the printworks in an alley behind Fleet Street, Nancy usually preferred to walk. She told herself she was saving the fare and she needed the exercise, but the truth was that she was in no hurry to get back home.

Pulling up her coat collar against the rain she headed towards St Paul’s. The pavements were crowded with home-going workers, the street lamps down Ludgate Hill burnishing their wet umbrellas so that they resembled insects’ wings. Nancy had no umbrella. She lifted her face and let the thin, cold drizzle wash away the grime of the day.

Fleet Street was always busy but tonight the road was at a standstill, choked with idling buses and wagons bearing great webs of paper to the newspaper printworks. She stopped for a moment at the kerb, intending to cross over to buy Cornelius an evening paper from an old news vendor who always gave her a cheerful good evening. But the stationary vehicles offered no room to pass. In the distance she could hear shouting followed by a ragged burst of cheering.

She became aware of a big cream-coloured car standing motionless just three feet away. A man was leaning forward in the rear seat, and she noticed the chauffeur’s peaked cap as he tilted his head to listen to what his passenger was saying. A deep blast on the car’s horn followed. Hooting was perfectly pointless, she thought impatiently, because anyone could see that the road was blocked all the way to Ludgate Circus. She was about to step off the pavement and somehow worm her way between the vehicles and through the clouds of exhaust fumes, but she hesitated for two seconds for a last look at the elongated curves of the cream bonnet. The raised black eyebrow of the wheel arch was close enough for her to have stroked it with her fingertips. As she hung there, the car door was thrown open and the passenger stepped out. The polished handle just grazed her elbow.

‘I am so sorry. I almost knocked you over.’

The man was tall, wearing a soft hat. He lifted it politely and she saw smooth fair hair and a narrow, chiselled face.

‘It’s all right. I was staring at your car instead of crossing the road.’

‘Were you? Do you like it?’

‘My father would. He loves cars. He used to have a De Dion-Bouton before the war but he had to sell it.’

‘Poor chap, that must have been hard for him. They are beautiful machines.’

‘He has a Ford now.’

The man raised a sympathetic eyebrow. ‘Quite serviceable, I should think. This one is a Daimler, the new model.’

As he spoke, the car gave a shudder and the engine stalled. The man gently shoved the running board with the shiny toe of his shoe. ‘Not as reliable as a De Dion, as you can see. What’s the trouble this time, Higgs?’

The chauffeur hurried to unclip and fold back the bonnet.

‘Spark-ignition again, Mr Maitland, I’d say. Don’t like the rain, it seems.’

Mr Maitland stared down the street.

He asked Nancy, ‘Do you know what’s causing the delay?’

The chanting and cheering was louder and she could hear the shrill, familiar blasts of police whistles.

‘A march or protest of some sort. Heading for the Embankment, probably. Is there a vote in Parliament tonight?’

He frowned. ‘Yes. I wonder who it is this time? Jobless ex-servicemen, coal miners? Suffragettes?’

She disliked this form of the word. ‘I would know if it was suffragists because I would be with them. But women do have the vote now, you know. Some of us do, at any rate.’

‘Not you, you are too young.’

‘I am twenty-one.’

He looked at her, and she found herself staring straight back. She had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.

He added, ‘I’m not unsympathetic to unemployed men, by the way, or to the miners. I shouldn’t have let impatience with the car and the hold-up get the better of me. I apologise again.’

Nancy marched a few steps on the spot to indicate how free she was, not encumbered even by an umbrella. The felt brim of her hat was beginning to droop with the weight of damp.

‘I usually find walking is the best way. It’s fast, free and good for you.’

‘Yes, on this occasion you’ll certainly get wherever you are going before me. Are you in a hurry?’

She hesitated. ‘Not really. I’m on my way home.’

‘I was in a hurry. But I’m already late, and I expect I’ll be invited to plenty more dull City dinners.’