“This one shouldn’t be too difficult. Where’s Dad? Is he over at the stables?”
“Can’t keep him away,” said Brenda. “Retired a few years ago, and still helping out. And Lady Rowan encourages him. Did you know they’ve got a mare in foal over there? Another racehorse prospect, so they say—but who will be going to the races with a war on? What with all this talk of rationing, you can bet they’ll be slaughtering horses for meat and calling it beef. There’s so many horses being sold cheap from the railway companies now, and all the factories have moved over to using lorries. I read about it in the papers—excess livestock, they said.”
“Dad won’t like to hear about that,” said Maisie. “Anyway, I saw a new horsebox parked near the gates when I drove in—is it Lady Rowan’s?”
“It is indeed. I reckon Lord Julian will do anything to keep her chin up—losing James, well, look what it did to her. Terrible. But she’s interested in her racehorses again, so you can’t blame him for wanting to keep her on the go. The thing isn’t used much, because once the horses are old enough, they’re in training anyway, but she likes them to come back to Chelstone for a bit of a holiday now and again—to be horses, she says.”
“Who drives it?”
“George, the chauffeur. Only now he drives the horsebox as well as a motor car. By the way, he says he’ll polish up the Alvis a treat for you—he’s taken a shine to that motor of yours.”
Having walked down to the stables to see her father, Maisie arrived back at the Dower House just before Anna, the evacuee girl, came home from school. Two boys burst into the kitchen, only to be cut short by Brenda.
“You can hold your horses right here, gentlemen. I want you to walk—and I mean walk—straight upstairs, change out of those uniforms into your mufti, and then you can go out to the stables to help Mr. Dobbs if you like. I’ll leave out a bottle of pop each, and a jam tart. All right?”
“Yes, Mrs. Dobbs,” they echoed.
“I don’t know why there was all the worry,” said Maisie, as she watched the boys run upstairs. “You seem to have everything well under control, and those boys aren’t too much, are they? I think Lady Rowan was just panicking, and—”
Maisie was at once aware that a small girl was standing on the threshold looking in, her eyes on Maisie. The child had jet-black hair pulled into two plaits secured with ribbons in the same green as her cardigan. A hairgrip held back a fringe that would otherwise have fallen into her eyes, and wisps had worked free around her face. She had eyes so blue they might as well have been black, and while her complexion was not that of an English rose, Maisie would not have expected it to draw undue attention. True, her skin was a little darker than most, but instead of sun-kissed, it seemed sallow. She had seen children with exactly the same coloring when she was in Spain, in the village where she had worked as a nurse during the Civil War.
“You must be Anna,” said Maisie, her smile broad, though she did not get up from her seat.
The girl put the first two fingers of her left hand into her mouth and began to suck.
“I’m about to have some tea—would you like some? I like mine milky, but I don’t like sugar. How do you like yours?”
Anna sighed and looked from Brenda, who had turned away to make a pot of tea, to Maisie. She walked forward, pulled out a chair—not the one next to Maisie, but one facing her—and clambered onto the seat. She placed her small case and her gas mask on another wooden chair to her right—well away from Maisie—and kept one hand on the case.
Brenda set a cup in front of Maisie, and one before Anna, with a slice of bread and jam alongside.
“I’d better be getting on,” said Brenda. “Make sure those boys haven’t been jumping on the beds again.” She left the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
Maisie pushed the sugar bowl towards Anna, who stared at her, and then towards the door. Maisie nodded and then sat back in her chair and sipped her tea. The girl reached for the teaspoon and with one hand scooped up a half measure of sugar, placing the forefinger of her other hand on top to ensure no grains were lost on the way to the cup. She tipped in the sugar, licked her finger, and stirred her tea, before blowing across the top of the beverage to cool it down. She put her right hand back on the case.
“Mrs. Dobbs tells me you like the horses,” said Maisie. While the child was concentrating on her tea, Maisie had slipped from her neck the chain that held her wedding ring. As she spoke, she leaned an elbow on the table and began absent-mindedly swinging it back and forth, as if it were a pendulum. She paid attention only to the girl.
Anna sighed, and nodded. She said not a word, but the ring had caught her eye, and she stared at it.
“Do you have a favorite?” asked Maisie.
The girl shrugged, still watching the ring.