Page 10 of The Midnight Carousel

‘Pardon me, ma’am.’

A middle-aged gentleman lifts his hat while he reviews Maisie from under thick black eyelashes. He is smiling, his teeth gleaming in a face that is darker than her own, dark like so many here.

Alighting from the RMS Oceanic on her arrival in America four years ago had been a revelation to Maisie.

There was the towering goddess of New York with her flame held aloft in welcome; the city rising heavenwards; the noise and hustle at the port, passengers pouring like ants from the huge hulks of ships; languages from all over the world; the smell of steam and sugar-coated peanuts.

But nothing beat the sight of varying degrees of brown skin. Tan and ebony, bronze and sand.

The surprises had continued. Far from being the land of barren deserts she was expecting, the journey by train from the east coast to Chicago offered a view of evergreen forests and rolling prairies, interspersed with thriving towns.

Then there was her new home. Maisie took to it at first sight.

A colonial-style residence situated on a large estate on the eastern borders of the city, Fairweather House is filled with light, and the scent of apple and cherry blossom or the earthy richness of fallen leaves, depending on the season.

Admittedly, living in close quarters with a man she barely knew took some getting used to.

Sir Malcolm was probably equally discomfited to find himself responsible for the welfare of his dead housekeeper’s orphaned niece.

They have never talked about the subject, but it didn’t take long for Maisie to work out that her new guardian was almost certainly entangled in some sort of romance with her aunt.

It explains their friendliness at the funfair, why Maisie was allowed to live at Jesserton, why she alone was favoured with an invitation to America, and assigned a governess here.

How different her life would have been if not for the good fortune of being taken in by this generous man.

He treats Maisie well, provides her with a home, food, even continuing the monthly allowance that Aunty Mabel started.

Most likely she would have been an illiterate pauper living on the streets by now, scraping a paltry living harvesting cockles or scrubbing floors, had he not helped– assuming that she’d survived.

And yet knowing her position is based entirely on Sir Malcolm’s feelings for her aunt makes it seem all the more tenuous.

It makes Maisie careful and as watchful as she was at the Sixpences’, always doing as she’s told, agreeing to Sir Malcolm’s requests, such as accompanying him here to the station today when she would rather be at home.

‘Hugo says Nancy has bought up half of New York, so it’s all hands on deck,’ were his exact words after he received a telephone call from his brother requesting assistance with the transportation of a large quantity of his wife’s luggage.

She spots the back of Sir Malcolm’s head through the crowd. Chicago’s Grand Central Station is swamped, and Maisie became separated from him after being shoved aside by a family of five rushing for a train. Everyone is impatient here, she finds, always in a hurry to reach somewhere else.

‘Excuse me, please,’ she says to the middle-aged gentleman.

His gaze is latched on to Maisie. She turns around, aware that he’s still watching as she elbows a path away from him.

The fragrance of fried onions from the hotdog stand follows Maisie as she struggles through the thousands of passengers milling about. Sidestepping a pile of luggage, she narrowly avoids colliding with a porter pushing a cart piled high with leather suitcases.

She is about to catch up with Sir Malcolm on platforms 5 and 6 when it happens: one second, their lives are progressing in a certain direction; the next everything changes, as though fate’s hand slips on the tiller.

Two burly station hands are manoeuvring a large wooden crate from the freight train alongside Platform 5, grunting with the strain.

Swinging like a pendulum on a series of ropes, it needs steadying by another couple of men, who rush over.

Together, they begin lowering the load, then leap back as the base of the crate collapses under its own weight.

There’s an almighty crash. Sir Malcom and Maisie dive aside just in time to avoid being knocked out by a large object hurtling to the ground.

Sir Malcolm’s face turns puce, his eyes bulging. ‘Does no one know how to do their job around here?’

Nudging each other, one of the station hands is pushed forwards.

‘Sorry, fella, I’ll just be taking this here out of your way,’ he says in a broad Irish accent.

As the man tugs the bundle, the protective wrapping rips at one corner.

Underneath the dull exterior of burlap, canary yellow bursts through like sunshine.

The rip extends and tears away a large chunk of the covering to reveal something so unexpected that at first Maisie thinks she must be imagining it.

Without thinking, she kneels down amongst cigarette stubs and discarded gum, pulled by some sort of magnetic force.

Deep brown eyes staring up at Maisie are framed by a toffee-coloured face and auburn mane.

Reaching out, her fingers stroke smooth skin as excitement tingles through her body.

She can’t stop looking, can’t help admiring the beautiful form of a carousel horse.

She glances up at Sir Malcolm and spots a rare softening of the hard lines around his eyes, as though he’s as enthralled as she is. Perhaps he’s also reminiscing about that magical day at Clacton, riding the carousel just weeks before their worlds collapsed.

Another helper arrives to lift the other end of the wooden horse, and the two men begin carting it off.

‘Wait!’ Sir Malcolm calls, halting them. ‘Where is this item going? It’s part of a carousel, I presume.’

‘It is, sir. The carousel will be sold at auction. Mr Fraser, the owner of the auction house, is over there, checking the cargo,’ one of them explains, pointing to the rear of the train.

Sir Malcolm’s brow furrows; his mouth twitches. Maisie is alert enough to the play of his expressions to know that this is his contemplation face.

‘I shall buy it,’ he announces to the station hand. ‘Take me to Mr Fraser. And here’s a dollar for your assistance.’

Maisie is speechless. Sir Malcolm is never this impulsive with money. Or anything. Even deciding on a new tie involves days of deliberation. In fact, moving to America is the only hasty decision she’s ever known him to make.

He hurries away, leaving Maisie alone with the horse.

Her fingers trace around a blue diamond on its forehead surrounded by four red letters– e o t h .

Gold-flecked eyes study Maisie as she tries to work out what it means.

As the horse stares, everything seems to melt away– the crowds, the noise– and she is transported back to the funfair at Clacton, circling around and around on the ride.

She thinks of the picture she found with Tommy on the sea off Canvey Island, the excitement they always felt extracting it from the gin bottle and dreaming of the outside world.

All that’s been wonderful in her life, she realizes, is centred around a carousel.

While they wait for the 6.47 p.m. from New York, Maisie uses an advertising leaflet for Sapolio soap as a makeshift fan.

Courtesy of the American governess, she can read the slogan.

cleans, scours, polishes and works without waste .

She flaps the paper frantically, finds there’s a little relief from the moisture-drenched heat.

Chicago in August must be the hottest place on earth, she thinks to herself.

‘It’s like a damn inferno here,’ Sir Malcolm grumbles, echoing her thoughts in his own way.

He has returned from buying the carousel, and is frowning at the large clock suspended on the north wall of the station. Clearly impatient for his brother’s return, he repeatedly checks his pocket watch as if that will make the hands tick faster.

Hugo is younger, jollier, than Sir Malcolm.

Having met his second wife by a Renoir painting in the Met while visiting America, he followed her to her home state of Illinois soon after.

At twenty-seven, Nancy is nine years his junior, with the self-assuredness of someone much older.

A breath of good luck for my brother , is how Sir Malcolm describes his sister-in-law, and well deserved after poor Charlotte , he always adds, referring to the death of Hugo’s first wife from a burst appendix.

The current Mrs Randolph is a regular visitor to Fairweather House, accompanying her husband there for dinners and drinks.

Unfortunately, she took an obvious dislike to the little girl from England from the moment the pair were introduced to one another at this very station, minutes after Maisie and Sir Malcolm had arrived in Chicago.

Maisie tears the leaflet in two and offers half to him to fan his face.

‘Try this,’ she says.

He shakes his head. ‘Your need is greater than mine.’

His shirt is damp, and his forehead is shiny with sweat.

‘I don’t need both,’ she persists.

Directing the scrap of paper closer to him, she wafts it around his face. Sir Malcolm grunts.

‘Very well,’ he concedes and takes it from her.

The train puffs alongside Platform 6 bang on time.

It’s another twenty minutes, however, before there’s any sign of the Randolphs.

The carriages are almost fully disembarked when a door is finally flung open and out steps a vision in sapphire blue.

She gambols towards them, her shiny, brown ringlets bouncing, her arms outstretched like she’s a famous actress from the moving pictures.