Margaret Steggles is a girl who yearns for beauty in her life. She is a schoolteacher moving to London for a new job, and she has been taught by her mother not to expect marriage. She tends to drift into reveries when contemplating beautiful scenery, literature, or music.
A small accident brings her into the chaotic household of Hebe and Alex Nislund. She finds Hebe beautiful but rude and is disappointed by Alex, who is a famous painter, because he seems so ordinary. Their housekeeper, Grantey, learning where Margaret lives, walks her home, because Grantey is returning to her primary place of employment, where she is an old retainer of Hebe’s parents, the celebrated playwright Gerard Challis and his wife Seraphina. Grantey invites her to stop by to visit at their home, Westwood, which is just up the hill from Margaret’s Highgate neighborhood.
A famous playwright is heady stuff for Margaret, who loves Challis’s plays. Although she doesn’t drop in on Grantey, she meets Zita, a German refugee and servant from Westwood, in the hardware story trying to find someone to mend a fuse before a party begins. The store can’t help, but Margaret can. She meets Gerard Challis and is struck by hero worship.
But Gerard is a pompous, humorless, unaffectionate, and selfish man who delights in carrying on chaste affairs with beautiful young women until they become demanding, at which point he dumps them without ceremony. He has coincidentally set his eye on Hilda, who just happens to be Margaret’s best friend. Hilda has plenty of admirers, though, and isn’t impressed, even though he is clearly wealthy and has told her he is single and his name is Marcus. This rejection of course makes him more eager.
Margaret is accepted into the Challis household as a friend and visitor, especially after the Nislund house is bombed and they all move in, too. Margaret enjoys being there even though they mostly treat her as a convenient person for helping take care of Alex and Hebe’s three small children. Margaret’s friendship with Zita can also be difficult because Zita is volatile, but they go to beautiful concerts together.
Margaret has also started helping John, a coworker of her father. He has been struggling to care for his mentally challenged daughter while his housekeeper is ill.
This novel made me laugh out loud sometimes, especially at the descriptions of the plots of Challis’s plays. The introduction tells us that Challis is based on a real person. I’d like to know who! (It turns out to be some guy named Charles Morgan.) In other respects, I really enjoyed this novel about Margaret’s development in self-respect and her shedding of her romantic myopia. This is a good one!
What? Me Read? 