Algie Stokes, the only son of a lockkeeper, has five women in his life: his mother, devoted wife of Will Stokes, and a beauty of her generation; Kate, his flighty, ambitious sister; Harriet Meese, plain but a good catch; Marigold Bingham, astonishingly lovely but resigned to poverty on a canal boat; and Aurelia, elegant, sensitive - and married to Algie's callous employer Benjamin Sampson. Always in the background is Murdoch Osborne, local tradesman, amateur thespian, and old enough to be Algie's father... Each plays a major role in Algie's life, and all contribute in very different ways to his story.