Maisie Dobbs (13 page)

Her first job was to take heavy coal scuttles to the breakfast room, the drawing room, His Lordship's study, the morning room, and to the hall. Kneeling by each fireplace, she pulled back the black iron grate cover, swept out yesterday's ashes, and placed them in an old empty scuttle. She rolled sheets of yesterday's newspaper, placed them in the grate, then carefully positioned dry kindling on top and lit the newspaper with a match.

As flames licked up and caught on the wood, Maisie leaned forward and balanced bricks of coal, one by one, on the spitting wood. Sitting back, she watched for just a few seconds as the fire crackled and flared into life. Satisfied that the wood and coal had taken the flames, she brushed splinters, coal dust, and ash under the grate, replaced the cover, and put a few more pieces of coal onto the mound before giving the fireplace a quick dust. She was ready to move on to another room.

When she had finished lighting fires in each of the rooms, it was time to fill the scuttles again and feed the fires so that the rooms were ready to warm those who had time to sit by a fire-people who had the time to be warmed by something other than hard work.

Throughout the day Maisie cleaned, ran errands for Cook, and generally served at the bidding of anyone above her in the pecking order, which was almost everyone in the household. But the duties of her waking hours brought a calm to Maisie's life that she had not known since before her mother became ill. She had only to follow the direction of others, and in the rhythm of her daily round, whether blacking the fireplaces, sweeping the stairs, or polishing furniture, there was room for thought-thought of what might be.

Maisie's "day off" was Sunday afternoon. As soon as the heavy clock on the mantelpiece over the kitchen stove struck a single chime at half past eleven, Maisie waited for Cook to look up at her and nod toward the door.

"All right, lass, off you go. And mind you're back by a decent hour!"

It was a feigned warning, because Maisie had nowhere to be at an indecent hour.

Untying her pinafore as she hurried from the kitchen and up the back stairs toward the servants' quarters, Maisie thought that her legs would never carry her as fast as her mind wanted to travel. She quickly changed into a long black skirt that had belonged to her mother, and a clean cotton blouse. She checked her reflection in the mirror just once, pushed her hat onto her head, and reached for her coat and coin purse before rushing through the bedroom door again. She was off to see her father, knowing that at twelve noon he would pull the fob watch from his waistcoat pocket and smile to himself. Frankie Dobbs couldn't wait for his girl to come home so they could spend a few hours together, a precious respite from a work-weary week.

On Sundays, Frankie was always to be found at the stable where he kept his mare, under the dry arches that were part of the Southern construction of Waterloo Bridge. Sunday was the day to clean the horse from head to hoof, to oil the leather traces, polish the brasses, and make sure the cart was ready for another week's work. It was an easy morning, a morning made sweeter by the knowledge that soon Maisie's footsteps would clatter against the cobblestone street leading to the stables.

"Love, you are a sight for sore eyes. How are you, my girl?"

"Well enough, Dad. I'm well enough"

"Let me just finish this, then we'll go home for a cuppa"

Together they worked in the stable, finally leaving the horse to the remainder of her day at rest. After a cup of tea, Frankie would dress in his Sunday best, and father and daughter would catch a bus to Brockwell Park, where they walked together before stopping to eat a packed lunch.

"You should see the library, Dad! I've never seen so many books. Walls of them. About everything"

"You and your books, girl.You keeping up with your reading?"

"Yes, Dad. I go to the public library every week on a Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Crawford sends me with a list for her and Mr. Carter, and I get books for myself as well. Mind you, Enid says she can't sleep with the light on, so I can't read for long."

"You watch your eyes, my girl, you only get one pair, you know"

"Dad!"

"I know, I'm naggin'. So, what about the other folk downstairs, what're they like, then?"

Father and daughter sat down on a wooden bench overlooking a flowerbed. "Well, you know Mr. Carter and Mrs. Crawford."

"That I do. Good people, both of them"

"Well, anyway, Mrs. Crawford is called `Cook' and `Mrs. Crawford' without any-well, without any method to it."

"What do you mean, love?"

I mean that sometimes she's called `Cook' or sometimes `Mrs. Crawford' and there's no rule-sometimes it's both names in one sentence"

Frankie chewed on a sandwich, and nodded his head for Maisie to continue.

"There's two footmen,Arthur and Cedric, and there's Her Ladyship's maid, Nora-she's a bit quiet. Apparently, at the big house, in Kent, there's more staff and a housekeeper, Mrs. Johnson. There's some scullery maids-Dossie, Emily, and Sadie-who help Mrs. Crawford in the kitchen, and of course there's Enid"

"What's she like, then?"

"She's got hair the color of a blazing fire, Dad. Really red, it is. And when she brushes it out at night, it goes right up like this"

Maisie held out her hands to indicate a distance away from the sides of her head, which made Frankie laugh. Something he couldn't understand-how she could look like a child one minute, and like a mature woman the next.

"She nice to you, love?"

"She's all right, Dad. Blows hot and cold, though. One minute she seems full of the joys of spring, and the next, well, I just keep out of her way."

"I might've guessed. Your carrottops are always the same. Remember, love, the more you're yourself, the more it's like you've just put iron shoes on yer feet-they'll 'old you to the ground when that 'ot and cold air comes rushing from 'er direction. That's the key with that sort."

Maisie nodded, as if to take in this important advice, and continued with her story. "The other thing about Enid is that I think she's sweet on Master James"

Frankie laughed again. "Oh! I see it didn't take you long to get wind of the goings-on! What's 'e like, then, this James? Bit old to be called `Master,' in' 'e?"

"Well, apparently, so I heard Cook saying, His Lordship gave instructions that Master James should be called Master until he proved his worth. Or something like that. He comes into the kitchen sometimes, you know, of an evening, after dinner. I've watched him. He comes in to see Cook, and as he walks by Enid, he always winks at her. She goes all red in the face and looks the other way, but I know she likes him. And Cook pretends to tell him off for coming into her kitchen, as if he was still a little boy, but then she brings out a big plate of ginger biscuits-which he gets stuck into while he's standing there in the kitchen! Drives Mr. Carter mad, it does."

"I should think it does! Likes order, does Mr. Carter. Now then, tell me about the 'ouse itself."

And Maisie smiled, glad to be in the easy company of her father, a man who was given to remark that a person could take him as they found him, there were no airs around Frankie Dobbs. And Frankie was more at peace now Life itself was easier-easier now that the man knew his daughter to be in good hands. Easier now that the bills were being paid.Yes, thought Frankie Dobbs as he walked with his daughter in the park, it was all getting easier.

@wlisie was fascinated by the library. It was well used, for both Lord and Lady Compton enjoyed literature, politics, and keeping up with the fancies of intellectual London. But when Maisie opened the door and brought in the coal scuttle at five in the morning, it was a quiet room. The lush velvet curtains kept drafts at bay and allowed warmth to seep into every corner after Maisie had lit the fire ready for whoever would use the room that morning.

Each day she lingered just a little longer before kneeling down to the fireplace, before her hands were blackened by the lighting of fires. Each day she learned a little more about the depth and breadth of knowledge housed in the Comptons' library, and each day her hunger grew Gradually she became braver, first tentatively touching the leather binding as she read the title on the spine of a book, then taking the text from its place on the shelf and opening the fine onionskin pages at the front of the book.

The library seized Maisie's imagination, rendering the small public library with which she was familiar a very poor runner-up in her estimation. Of all the rooms in the house, she loved this the most. One morning, as she replaced a book to attend to the fireplace, a thought occurred to Maisie.

After her mother's death, she had been used to rising at three in the morning to make her father his tea. It had never hurt her then. In fact, she considered getting up at half past four to be "lying in " So, what if she got up at three in the morning and came down to the library? No one would know. Enid could sleep through the roof falling in over her head, and she had started coming up to bed late over the past week anyway. Lord knows where she had been, but it certainly wasn't out, because Carter locked up the house as if it were the Bank of England every night. She dreaded that Enid might be with Master James. Just two weeks ago, as she was leaving Lady Rowan's sitting room, where she had been sent to collect a tray one evening, Maisie saw Enid and James together on the first-floor landing. Without being observed by them, she watched as James ran his fingers through his fair hair and continued speaking with Enid, his gray eyes intent upon her response to his question. Was it a question? Surely it was, because she saw Enid shake her head and look at the carpet, while brushing her right shoe back and forth across the fibers.

And now Enid was never in bed before midnight-which meant that, thankfully, she would be deep in slumber by three o'clock. Maisie resolved to come to the library when the house was asleep. That night, before pulling up the covers and extinguishing the small lamp beside her bed, Maisie pinched the skin on her right arm sharply three times to ensure that she would awake in time to put her plan into action.

The next morning Maisie awakened easily by three o'clock.A chill in the attic room tempted her to forget her plan, but she sat up, determined to go through with it. She washed and dressed with hardly a sound, crept out of the room carrying her shoes and a cardigan, and felt her way downstairs in the dark. In the silent distance, the kitchen clock struck the single chime of a quarter past the hour. She had almost two hours before the coal scuttles had to be filled.

The library was silent and pitch black as Maisie entered. Quickly closing the door behind her, she lit the lamps and made her way to the section that held philosophy books. This was where she would start. She wasn't quite sure which text to start with, but felt that if she just started somewhere, a plan would develop as she went along. The feeling inside that she experienced when she saw the books was akin to the hunger she felt as food was put on the table at the end of the working day. And she knew that she needed this sustenance as surely as her body needed its fuel.

Maisie's fingers tapped along the spines of books until she could bear the electric tingle of excitement no longer. Within minutes, she was seated at the table, opening The Philosophical Works of David Hume, and drawing the desk lamp closer to illuminate the pages. Maisie took a small notebook and pencil from her apron pocket, set it down on the desk and wrote the title of the book and the author's name. And she read. For an hour and a half, Maisie read. She read with understanding on a subject she had barely even heard of.

As the library clock chimed a quarter to five, Maisie turned to her notebook and wrote a precis of what she had read, what she understood, and her questions. The clock struck five, Maisie put the notebook and pencil away in her apron pocket, closed the book, replaced it ever so carefully on the shelf, extinguished the desk light, and left the room. She closed the door quietly behind her and went quickly downstairs to fill the coal scuttles. Just a short while later she opened the library door again. Without looking at the shelves, as if eye contact with the spines of the beloved books would give her game away, she set the coal scuttle down and knelt by the grate to build and light the fire.

Each weekday morning Maisie rose at three to visit the library. Sometimes a party at the house would keep the Comptons up until the small hours, and the change in routine made the library expeditions a risk she could not afford. She was liked in the house, though she had been spoken to by Lord and Lady Compton only once, when she had first arrived.