Page 73 of The Midnight Carousel
The drinks arrive, and they sit silently for a while, sipping, neither needing words.
Maisie doesn’t have the heart to tell Tommy that, unlike him, she has proof that her mother never forgot her– even after all these years, her protective instincts for him are fierce.
Automatically, her fingers flutter to the tiny locket strung around her neck.
She owns two Cartier watches, a whole safe full of jewels, tiaras, cars and several mansions, but this circle of tin containing a lock of blonde hair– her mother’s hair– is Maisie’s most valuable possession.
Laurent had collected it from the slums and wrapped it up for her on the afternoon that he died.
She clears her throat.
‘Tommy, do you remember our most precious treasure?’
He looks at her as though the question is ridiculous. ‘Of course. I’ve loved carousels ever since. They’re magical.’
Maisie couldn’t agree more. Every carousel is special, but, decades later, nothing has ever beaten the exquisiteness of Gilbert Cloutier’s creation.
‘Well, I actually owned the exact carousel from that picture for a while. It was how everything started. It truly was gorgeous in real life… truly…’ Her voice peters out.
‘You never did,’ Tommy replies, suitably amazed. ‘I knew you had an amusement park but not that carousel.’
‘To be honest, the thing caused all sorts of bother,’ she admits. She hesitates, undecided whether to continue. But Tommy is like a brother. In actual fact, he is a brother, and she trusts him with her life. ‘The truth is, and I’ve never admitted it to a soul, but… I set fire to it, in the end.’
It feels strange to admit this out loud after years of keeping the secret, like the truth is rusty and needs oiling.
In theory, it was a resourceful plan: she lit a small fire within an earthenware pot, as she used to do at the Sixpences’, settled it inside the carousel’s metal control panel, and the embers smouldered for hours before finally cracking the container and catching to the fuel she had splashed around the carousel the previous night.
It meant she was at Mr Peabody’s office when the blaze took hold.
If only she had been home earlier. Or one of the staff or Hugo had stayed at the house to supervise Nancy, as Maisie had assumed, and called the emergency services at the first sight of the flames, thus saving the rest of the park.
Laurent must have been blinded by love not to have suspected that the main reason Maisie delayed joining him in Paris was the guilt she felt for causing such trouble for the workforce.
It’s still there, their distress at the time haunting her after all these years.
In the circumstances, assisting them was the least she could do.
She helped the Ride Jocks and other employees find new jobs at other parks, filled out claims, badgered Hugo for compensation; he was no worse off after the fire since the company that had insured the amusement park eventually paid out.
Maisie even donated a substantial portion of her own money until every single person was set up to her satisfaction.
The Crew drifted away on the Illinois wind one blustery November day.
‘Reckon we need to get moving again,’ Lucky Nate had said.
Tommy leans forward and places one hand on her shoulder. ‘You would’ve had your reasons,’ he replies, always seeing the best in her.
She did. Of course, Maisie didn’t mean for the flames to spread, or she would never have taken Milo back there.
The explosion was unexpected: nowadays, everyone knows about the dangers of gasoline, but at that time Maisie had no idea what would happen; she was shocked when the unusually strong wind carried sparks to the other wooden rides, which easily caught on fire.
Collateral damage. Maisie couldn’t entrust the strange horse to Hugo.
Obsessed with proving himself but never noticing anything, including his brother’s imminent demise, he might have allowed people to start riding it again.
She wishes now that she had done things differently.
Several times Maisie was close to handing herself in to the police, but had changed her mind for Milo’s sake.
Thankfully, Nancy was released without charge when the fluid in the fuel bottle was analysed and found to be what remained of her secret stash of vodka.
They eventually found peace, the Randolphs, after the divorce: Hugo married Gloria the Money Girl and lived quietly at a restored Fairweather House, while Nancy left Assumption and bought a small apartment near the Met with her share of the divorce settlement.
All of them gone now, their stories faded to mist.
Tommy taps her hand. ‘Shall we?’
She understands his question without further explanation.
Helping each other up, they hold hands as they always did, heading towards the fairground.
They arrive at the carousel. Maisie waits for Tommy to choose a horse, then, with some help from the woman operating the ride, she hoists herself on to the palomino pony beside him.
When the music starts, excitement charges through her body.
They circle and circle and circle again, both giggling.
On the fourth rotation, Maisie’s eyelids flutter closed.
You too shall fly , someone whispers.
In every direction, there is dark indigo blue dotted with tiny, sparkling stars.
A breeze kisses her face, as warm as the heat of a summer afternoon.
Maisie is rising and falling, half galloping, half soaring, gripping the reins of a caramel-coloured colt with golden eyes and a blue diamond on its forehead, its hooves thundering towards a ball of liquid silver light, towards Laurent, across a glorious midnight sky.