Page 44 of The Midnight Carousel

With the arrival of autumn, there is a softening.

As the trees shed their leaves, Maisie begins to experience a wistfulness for her parents.

There could be a hundred reasons for their actions– and shouldn’t she feel glad that they’re alive?

Excitement tingles that one day she might even meet them.

She could try to find them. Or they might come for her.

She stores the idea in her heart: they might still want Maisie.

Her resentment towards Laurent is also released. It was a brief moment in time when two lonely souls were thrown together, she tells herself, and is best left in the past. Four months on, and the ache in her heart is manageable if she doesn’t let herself dwell on him.

While Maisie’s hopes of romance have been crushed, Clara’s prospects have been boosted by the changes in the household. Unable to keep away from the new footman, Robert, she giggles in the hallways, distracting everyone else. For once, Maisie is grateful for Eric’s dourness.

‘Clara Higgins, get back to work,’ she can hear his shout echo as he catches the maid neglecting her duties for the third time in an hour.

Eric is now the official butler. Returned the week after his father made a miraculous recovery, Arnold had asked Maisie to release him from household duties.

‘My dad’s illness showed me that we have to make the most of our lives, and working two jobs was getting too much,’ he’d admitted with a regretful expression. ‘I would’ve said something sooner, but I didn’t like to let you down. I think my place is at the carousel.’

Wishing him nothing but happiness, Maisie had agreed.

She was glad to see him back at the carousel, although– and she would never share this thought with Arnold– James was admirable in his absence.

Maybe even a better guardian. Swooping in, his large fists clenched, not a single person dared approach the strange horse.

James has also kept his promise to keep an eye on Sir Malcolm.

He visits three mornings a week and spends his evenings off at Fairweather House.

He even summoned a doctor, despite Sir Malcolm’s objections.

‘There’s nothing physically wrong with him,’ Dr Carlton diagnosed.

‘Just overtiredness. Make sure he gets plenty of bed rest.’

One evening, James appears as usual, but with a square package in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.

‘If you’re too busy for the jazz club, I’m bringing the jazz club to you,’ he explains.

Astonished, Maisie follows him to the drawing room where he begins to nudge the couches against the walls.

Next, he rolls up the rug with Maisie’s help, and then shows her the contents of the package.

To her excitement, he has brought along five new gramophone records, black and slick like the eels she used to catch with Tommy on Canvey Island.

She turns one over in her hands and sets it on the gramophone.

The insistent notes of a trumpet burst into the air.

‘These are the latest tunes,’ James explains. ‘You get the cocktails mixed while I pop up to see Sir Malcolm. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’

Ensuring there’s only the tiniest drop of vodka in her own glass, Maisie adds orange juice.

By the time James returns, Maisie is already swinging her arms as she circles the room on tiptoe.

James joins in for a time before he changes the record and breaks into the moves that she recognizes from the jazz club.

‘This is called the Fox Trot,’ he tells her, his eyes gleaming.

Maisie mimics him, managing to keep up until the rhythm is so fast that she can hardly catch her breath.

With an over-exuberant twirl, she loses her balance and her ankle is turned askew.

Falling back on the couch, she winces. Immediately, James switches off the music and crouches on the floor to examine her foot. He looks serious, tilting his head.

‘Luckily, it’s not broken. And it’s nothing too serious– you can still rotate your ankle. You’ll only get a small bruise.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘It feels like I’ve been stomped on by an elephant.’

James laughs. ‘I’m very sure. My mother trained as a nurse, and I picked up a thing or two.

She met my father when treating him after he returned injured from a military expedition to Burma, as it happens,’ he explains.

‘At around the same time, Aunty Lydia met Sir Malcolm at the garden fête that the Randolphs threw every June.’

Maisie removes her shoes, and lies back on the couch with her feet elevated on the armrest. The throbbing subsides.

‘Sir Malcolm has never talked about your family,’ she discloses.

James remains on the floor, crossing his legs.

‘I’m not that surprised. My mother blamed him for Aunty Lydia’s death.

It was Sir Malcolm who bought the stallion she fell from.

It was wild and untrained,’ he says. ‘There was a big falling-out afterwards, with all my extended family taking my mother’s side, and even my grandmother, who usually wants everyone to get along, won’t hear his name mentioned. ’

Maisie has never experienced the closeness of a big family or grandparents growing up. By abandoning her like this, her parents denied Maisie more than themselves, and it feels like she’s been cast adrift from herself.

‘Don’t they mind that you’re here?’

He shrugs. ‘As long as they don’t have to see him, I have their blessing,’ he explains. ‘I’m the only one of my family who was ever close to him in any way, mainly because Sir Malcolm was decent enough to pay my school fees.’

She absorbs this information

‘I didn’t realize your family isn’t rich.’

James’s blue eyes study Maisie with interest. ‘I am going to make it in America, Maisie. Nothing will stop me.’

For the first time, Maisie thinks that she might believe him.

After that, they settle into a new routine of dancing together on his evenings off.

Each time, James teaches her the new steps that he’s learnt from the patrons at the club.

The Texas Tommy. The Black Bottom. It doesn’t take long for Maisie to guess that he’s trying to woo her.

Even so, she is taken by surprise when, at the end of one such evening, James gets down on one knee.

‘Marry me,’ he says, with an urgency in his voice.

Maisie is speechless. In all their times together, she hasn’t once thought of him in a romantic sense. James must pick up on her hesitation because he stands and finishes his drink.

‘Please just think about it,’ he says, and departs.

Maisie turns the idea over in her head for a full week.

As she walks towards the patio at the end of a long day at Silver Kingdom, she takes a seat on the bench.

Late autumn has brought a gentle glow to the Fairweather Estate.

Against a backdrop of pale yellows and browns, the carousel stands out, its vibrant colours brightening the landscape.

Over the last few months, James has shot up in her estimation, but shouldn’t she be feeling more something – excitement? passion?– at a marriage proposal? If Laurent had asked for her hand in marriage, Maisie wouldn’t feel like this, she knows that.

But where is Laurent? Back in France with his wife.

She digs her fingernails into her palms to stop the images of the man she loves with another woman. Is she going to resign herself to the life of an old maid for the sake of a man who doesn’t want her? Secretly, she craves romance, needs companionship.

When James arrives at Fairweather on his next evening off, Maisie opens the door for him. Both fear and hope appear in his eyes.

‘I’ve thought about it,’ she says. ‘And the answer is yes.’