Editing Excellent Women (section)

==Plot summary==

The book is a [[first-person narrative]] in which Mildred Lathbury records the humdrum details of her everyday life in [[Post-war Britain (1945–1979)|post-war]] London near the start of the 1950s. Perpetually self-deprecating, but with the sharpest wit, Mildred is a [[clergyman]]'s daughter who is now just over thirty and lives in "a shabby part…very much the 'wrong' side of [[London Victoria station|Victoria Station]]". She works part-time at the charitable Society for Aged Gentlewomen and otherwise occupies herself by attending and helping at the local church. There she is particularly friendly with its unmarried [[High church]] priest Julian Malory and his slightly older sister Winifred, who keeps house for him.

Recently Mildred had shared a flat with her schoolteacher friend Dora Caldicote and at one time had been briefly courted by Dora's brother William, with whom she still occasionally keeps in touch. Her rather uneventful life grows more exciting with the arrival of new neighbours in the flat below her, [[anthropologist]] Helena Napier and her handsome husband Rocky, to whom Mildred feels herself drawn. However, she is wary of being too taken in by his charm, having learned that while serving in Italy in the [[Royal Navy]], Rocky's principal task had been to look after the welfare of the female auxiliaries known as [[Women's Royal Naval Service|'Wrens']].

Helena is not interested in housework and leaves the flat in an untidy state. After his return, Rocky is only a little more house-proud, preferring to go up to Mildred's flat and get her to make him tea. Eventually the ill-matched married couple quarrel when Helena leaves a hot saucepan on a polished walnut table; she storms off to live with her mother and he to stay in a country cottage he owns. Mildred is left to negotiate between them who owns what furniture and eventually helps arrange their reconciliation.

A subplot revolves around the activities of Julian Malory, who accepts Allegra Gray, a glamorous clergyman's widow, as a tenant for the flat in his vicarage. After Julian eventually becomes engaged to Allegra, she attempts to ease Julian's sister out of the house. Winifred then flees weeping to Mildred and asks if she can stay with her. Julian follows her closely, having quarrelled with Allegra over her behaviour. The engagement is broken off and Allegra leaves for the more upmarket area of [[Kensington]]. Winifred confesses that she had always hoped that Mildred would marry Julian so that they could all live together, but obviously that has now become impossible.

Throughout these events, Mildred wryly observes the ups and downs of matrimony, offering a ready ear to the participants and wondering whether she would be happy left completely on the shelf.  When attending a meeting of Helena Napier's 'Learned Society' (which is never specified), Mildred had met Helena's supposed alternative love interest,  fellow anthropologist Everard Bone, who is definitely wary of becoming entangled with a married woman and at one point flees to the north to pursue his interest in prehistory. Subsequently he seems more impressed by Mildred than she is by him as he pursues her with phone calls and invitations to dinner. By the end of the novel, however, Mildred reluctantly agrees to play the 'excellent woman' in Everard’s life, to the extent of proof-reading his learned papers and helping index them.