Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White - Rosie Thomas - Страница 13

London, February 1931

Amy was wandering listlessly around the room, picking up a crystal bottle and sniffing at the scent before putting it down again unremarked, then fingering the slither of heavy cream satin that was Isabel’s new robe waiting to be packed at the top of one of the small cases.

It was peculiar to think that tomorrow night Peter Jaspert’s large, scrubbed hands would probably undo this broad sash, and then reach up to slip the satin off his wife’s shoulders. Isabel would be Mrs Peter Jaspert then. Amy wondered whether Isabel was thinking about that too. Didn’t every bride, on the night before her wedding? But it was impossible to judge from Isabel’s face what she was thinking. She looked as calm and serene as she always did. She was sitting patiently in front of her dressing-table mirror while her maid worked on her hair. Isabel had her own maid now, who would travel with her on the honeymoon, and then they would settle into the house that Peter Jaspert had bought in Ebury Street.

Amy and Bethan would be left behind at Lovell House in Bruton Street. The town house didn’t feel as cavernously huge as it had done when Amy was a child, but it could be very quiet and empty, and faintly gloomy. It was all right now, of course, because it was full of preparations for the wedding. But once that was over, what then?

‘I’ll miss you so much, Bel,’ Amy said abruptly. Isabel looked at her sister’s reflection in the glass beside her own. She thought that you could tell what Amy was like just by watching her for five minutes. She was so restless, incapable of keeping still so long as there was any new thing to be investigated or assimilated. When there was nothing new or interesting, she was stifled and irritable. Her face reflected it all, always flickering with naked feelings for anyone to read. Isabel herself wasn’t anything like that. Feelings were private things, to be kept hidden or shared only with the closest friends. Amy didn’t care if the taxi driver or butcher’s boy knew when she was in the depths of despair.

She needed a calming influence, and a focus for her days, Isabel decided. A husband and a home would give her that, when the right time came. She smiled at Amy.

‘I’m hardly more than a mile away. We’ll see each other every day, if you would like that. And I’ll be a married woman, remember. We can do all kinds of things together that we couldn’t do before.’

Amy dropped the robe back on to the bed. ‘Go to slightly more risky restaurants for lunch, you mean? To the theatre unescorted? Will that really make any difference? You’ll be gone, and you can’t pretend that anything will ever be the same. That’s what I’m worried about. You’ll be too busy giving little dinners for Peter’s business cronies and his allies from the House, and going to their little dinners, and whenever I come to see you I’ll be just a visitor in your house …’

‘That’s what wives do, Amy,’ Isabel said quietly. ‘You don’t understand that because you’re not ready to marry. And I’m sorry if you feel that my house, and Peter’s house, won’t be just as much a home to you as this one is.’

Amy was contrite immediately.

‘Oh darling, I’m sorry.’ She knelt down beside Isabel’s chair. ‘I shouldn’t go on about my own woes when it’s your big day tomorrow and you’ve got enough to think about. They’re such little woes, anyway.’ She forced the brightness back into her face and hugged her sister. ‘I shall love to come to see you in your pretty house, if Peter will have me, and of course we’ll do all kinds of things together. I hope you’ll be very, very happy, too. If anyone deserves to be made happy it’s you, Isabel Lovell. Mrs Jaspert-to-be.’

Bethan came in, her arms full of the freshly ironed pieces of Isabel’s complicated trousseau. It had taken two months to assemble it. Bethan’s eyes went straight to the robe on the bed.

‘The creases! Amy, is this your doing? Isabel will be taking it out of her bag tomorrow night looking like a rag.’

‘All my doing, Bethan. I’m sorry. I just looked at it. I’ll take it down now and press it again myself.’

Bethan took it out of her hands at once. ‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. A nice scorch mark on the front is all it needs. Just go and get yourself ready for the party.’

‘Do, Amy,’ Isabel said. ‘They’ll need you.’ Her maid had finished wrapping the long red hair up in tight papers, and now she was methodically stroking thick white cream on to the bride’s face. Amy nodded. Isabel meant Gerald and Adeline. Amy blew a kiss from the door and went next door to her own room, wondering if she looked as heavy-hearted as she felt. If she did, she was not going to be a great asset at the pre-wedding party.

Bethan had laid her evening dress out on the bed for her, and in the bathroom across the corridor that she shared with Isabel everything would be put out ready for her bath. But instead of beginning to get ready, Amy sat down in the chair at her writing desk. The curtains were drawn against the February dark, but she stared at them as if she could see through and into the familiar street view. She was thinking that for nineteen years, ever since babyhood, she had shared a room with Isabel, or at least slept in adjoining rooms as they did now. They had hardly ever been separated for more than a night or two. And now they had come to the last night, and tomorrow Isabel would be gone.

It was going to be very lonely without her. It had started already. Usually Isabel and Amy would have prepared for a stiff evening like this one together, and then afterwards they would have laughed about it. But tonight the guests were elderly relatives and old family friends who had come up from the country for the wedding, and the party was to be their introduction to the bridegroom. Because Peter was to be there, the bride had to stay hidden. ‘What archaic rubbish,’ Amy had said, but nobody had paid any attention. The bride was to have a tray in her room, and Amy would have to go down and go through the smiling rituals and the interminable dinner afterwards on her own. There would be Colonel Hawes-Douglas, and the local Master of Foxhounds, and numerous old aunts and second cousins. There wasn’t even Richard to help her out. He was supposed to be coming home from Eton on twenty-four hours’ leave, but he hadn’t put in an appearance yet.

‘Bugger,’ Amy said. ‘Bugger it all.’

She went across the landing and ran her bath, then she plunged into the water and topped it up until it was as hot as she could bear. It would make her face as red as a boiled beetroot, but that was too bad. Perhaps the heat would sap some of the loneliness and frustration and irritation out of her.

If it had been different with Mother and Father, Amy thought, perhaps losing Isabel would have been easier to bear. But it wasn’t different. It was exactly the same as it had been for years and years.

Hugh Herbert had been the first of Adeline’s lovers. It had all been conducted with perfect discretion, and with never a whisper of scandal, but it had been the end of her marriage to Gerald. There could be no question of divorce for Lord and Lady Lovell, but they had simply arranged their lives so that they didn’t meet. When Adeline was in London, or staying in a house party where Hugh was tactfully given a bedroom close to hers, Gerald was at Chance. When Adeline entertained one of her carefully chosen gatherings of amusing people at Chance, Gerald was in London or shooting in Scotland. They were only obliged to meet each other on rare, formal occasions such as family weddings or the girls’ presentations at Court. They were always rigidly polite to one another, as if they had just met, and they would be just the same tonight. It was just that sometimes Amy saw her father look at her mother with a kind of baffled, suppressed longing, and Adeline never noticed it at all. She would say, ‘Gerald, do you think we should move through into dinner?’ but she would never see him properly.

Amy could remember exactly when she had recognized the truth. They had been sitting on the lawn at Chance, under the cedar tree, and a man called Jeremy had been leaning over her mother’s shoulder, pointing to something in the magazine she was holding. His hand had brushed her shoulder, and Adeline had smiled like a young girl. They love each other, she thought, and suddenly she understood the succession of special friends, always men, who took up so much of her mother’s time. She had confided in Isabel, and Isabel had nodded gravely. ‘Yes. I think you’re right. But you must never, ever mention it to anyone.’

That night Amy had committed it all to her journal, under the big black heading PRIVATE. She was fifteen.

Amy sighed now in her over-hot bath. It was making her feel sadder instead of soothing her, and the prospect of the evening was growing steadily blacker. She stood up to break the mood and rubbed herself ferociously with the big white towel that Bethan had put out for her.

Perhaps Richard would have arrived.

It would help to have him here, even though it was Richard who chafed the soreness between their parents. Amy had witnessed it dozens of times, first seeing Gerald flare from silence into scornful rage at some refusal or attitude of Richard’s, and then watching Adeline leap to Richard’s defence. They were the only times that her languid, social mask dropped in family gatherings. Gerald would frown angrily and walk away, but there was something in the way he carried himself that betrayed loneliness to Amy. She had tried sometimes to offer him her company, but he always said something like, ‘Shouldn’t you be in the schoolroom?’ or, more lately, ‘Haven’t you got a party to go to?’

Back in her room Amy put on her dress without enthusiasm. Adeline’s taste in her own clothes was impeccable, and so simple as to be almost stark. Her utterly plain sheath dresses worn with a sequinned blazer were much copied, as were her dramatic strokes like wearing a necklace of wildflowers when every other woman in the room was loaded with diamonds. Adeline always had the best idea first. But she preferred to see her daughters in what she called ‘fresh, pretty clothes’. Isabel would have looked ravishing in these sweet ruffles, but against Amy’s rangy height and firm, high-cheekboned face they were less successful. She hooked the dress up and stared briefly at her reflection.

‘Oh God,’ she said, and then smiled. Well, the effect wasn’t quite so bad when she smiled.

In the long drawing room on the first floor a handful of elderly guests were already peering mistrustfully into their cocktail glasses. A trio of red-faced men were standing with Gerald in a semicircle around the fire, and their wives were perched with Adeline on the daringly modern white-upholstered sofas. Adeline had had the drawing room done over, and had banished all the glowering family portraits and brocaded covers in favour of pale polished wood and white hangings. In the middle of it, in her plain black crêpe, Adeline looked stunning. Amy kissed her cheek.

‘Darling, such a pink face,’ Adeline murmured. ‘Thank God you’re down. Is Isabel all right?’

‘Cool as a cucumber.’

‘That’s something. Where is Richard, the little beast?’

‘I haven’t seen him. He can’t have turned up yet.’

‘That means utter destruction of the dinner placement. I was counting on him to talk nicely to Lady Jaspert.’

‘Probably exactly why he isn’t here. I shouldn’t worry about the table. It’s only family, isn’t it? It’s not as though we’re expecting the Prince of Wales.’

‘No, unfortunately.’

That was a sore point, Amy recalled. Adeline moved on the fringes of the Fort Belvedere set, but HRH had declined the wedding invitation. The Yorks would represent Their Majesties at St Margaret’s, Westminster, tomorrow, but it wasn’t quite the coup for Adeline that the presence of the Prince himself would have been.

‘Do go and talk to people, Amy, before Peter gets into completely full flood.’

Isabel’s fiancé was a bulky, handsome man with a high, English county complexion, very sleek blond hair and bright, shrewd eyes. As the eldest son he would inherit in due course, but he was not attracted by the prospect of following his father into obscurity as another country peer. Peter Jaspert was an ambitious City man. (‘Metals. Manganese or aluminium or something,’ Adeline would say with deliberately affected vagueness. She had long ago given up the cherished dream that Isabel might make the grandest match of all, but still Peter Jaspert wasn’t quite what she had hoped for. There were no possible grounds for objecting to him, but Adeline was faintly disappointed. ‘Her happiness is all that matters. Anything else is up to you now, darling,’ was the only oblique reference she had ever made about it to Amy.)

Peter had also recently fought and won a by-election as the Conservative candidate. He had proposed to Isabel the day after taking his seat in Parliament. He was poised for rapid advancement, and he had chosen Isabel Lovell as the utterly correct wife to help him on his way.

Amy crossed the room to him. He was talking to one of Gerald’s ancient, deaf cousins.

‘What? What?’

‘I said there will certainly have to be a General Election by the end of the year. We can win it, on the National coalition ticket if you like, and then there’s nothing standing in the way of tariff reform. Which is the thing the economy needs, as we all know. Hello, hello, little sister. What a pretty frock. Everything ready for the big day, is it?’

‘Hello, Peter. GOOD EVENING, Uncle Edward.’

The evening was perfectly orchestrated, perfectly predictable and completely dull. Gerald sat at the head of the massive, polished dinner table, separated from his wife by twenty people. Peter Jaspert dutifully made sure that he spoke to every one of the guests who had been invited to meet him. Amy smiled long and hard and reassured a succession of aunts that yes, Isabel was blissfully happy and yes, they did seem to be very much in love.

Richard didn’t put in an appearance at all.

Gerald’s face betrayed a flicker of cold fury when they went through to dinner and he saw that Glass had discreetly rearranged the places, but that was all.

It was past midnight when Glass finally saw the last guests into their cars. He left the huge double doors firmly closed, but not locked, and then he walked silently back across the marble floor where the exquisite arrangements of arum lilies stood ready for tomorrow.

Up in her drawing room Adeline sighed. ‘Well, that was rather a trial. Isabel must be asleep by now, so I won’t disturb her. Good night Gerald, Amy. Let’s pray for not a wisp of fog tomorrow, shall we?’

After she had gone Gerald poured himself a last glass of whisky from the decanter and looked across at Amy.

‘You’ll miss your sister, won’t you?’

She nodded, surprised.

‘Mn. Yes. You’ve been close, the three of you. Things being … as they are.’

Amy waited, wondering if he was going to say anything else. If he was going to ask her where Richard was, even mention him at all. Dimly, she felt that he wanted to but couldn’t begin, and she was clumsily unable to help him. But Gerald turned away, saying irritably, ‘Well. It’ll be your turn next, marrying some damn fool who can’t even wear proper evening clothes like a gentleman.’

‘Everyone wears dinner jackets these days,’ Amy said mildly. ‘Peter’s hardly in the shocking forefront there.’ She felt disappointed, as if something important had almost happened and then been interrupted.

‘Good night,’ Gerald said.

She went to him and kissed his cheek, and felt as she touched him that he was suddenly quite old.

Amy went slowly up the stairs to her room. Her jaw felt cracked with smiling and her head ached. It was a familiar feeling at the end of an evening. She even brought it home with her from debutante dances, when she was supposed to be dancing, and enjoying herself, and falling in love. As Isabel had done, presumably. But Amy doubted that it would ever work for her. Amy had begun her first Season, two years ago now, with all the zest and enthusiasm that she brought to anything new. The dances had seemed amazingly glamorous after the strictures of Miss Abbott’s school, and the men she met had all struck her as sophisticated and witty. But then, so quickly that she was ashamed, the idea of another dance with the same band, and the same food, and the same faces, preceded by the same sort of dinner with a new identical partner whose name was the only thing that distinguished him from the last, had become dull instead of exciting. Amy was puzzled to find that most of the young men bored her, whether they were soldiers, or City men, or just young men who went to dances all the time. The few who didn’t bore her made her shy, and tongue-tied, and they soon drifted on to the vivacious girls whom Amy envied because they always looked as if they were enjoying themselves so much. Isabel had been one of them. She had the ability to look happy and interested, wherever she was, and she had been one of the most popular girls of her year. Peter Jaspert was lucky to have her.

Amy shivered a little and sat down at her writing desk again. She pulled her big, black leather-covered journal towards her. She tried to write something every day, even though the aridity of the last months was more of a reproach than a pleasure. Desultorily, before starting to write, she flicked back through the pages. Here were the early days, full of schoolroom passions and rivalries, and long accounts of hunting at Chance. Two years ago came the explosion of her coming out, with minute descriptions of every dress and every conversation. Here was the night when a subaltern had kissed her in a taxi, and she had felt his collarstud digging into her and the shaved-off prickle of hair at the nape of his neck. She had thought sadly of Luis, and politely let the boy go on kissing her until they reached their destination.

Amy turned to the day of her presentation at Court. At three o’clock in the afternoon she had dressed in a long white satin dress with a train, tight snow-white gloves that came up over her elbows, and Lady Lovell’s maid had secured two white Prince of Wales’ feathers in her hair.

A great day [she had written]. Why was I so nervous? The Mall was one long line of cars to the Palace gates with white feathers nodding in each one. There were people all along the roadside to watch us arriving. Then all at once we were walking down the long red carpets past the flunkeys and there were seven girls in white dresses in front of me, then four, three, two and one, then I heard my name and all I could think was gather the train up, step forward, right foot behind left, head bowed and down, down, count to three and then up again. I didn’t fall over or drop my flowers. And then the King said something about Father at the Coronation …

Someone tapped at Amy’s door.

‘It’s me. Can I come in? I can’t sleep at all.’

Isabel came in wrapped in her old dressing-gown, and sat down on the bed.

‘Are you scared?’ Amy asked, and she shook her head.

‘Not exactly. Just thinking how … important it all is. How did Peter look?’

‘Very handsome,’ Amy said truthfully. ‘And he was wonderful with Uncle Edward and the colonel and all the rest of them.’

‘He is, isn’t he? I look at him sometimes when we’re with people and I feel so proud of him, and yet I feel that I don’t know him at all, and that he isn’t the private kind of man he is when we’re alone together.’

‘Do you know the private man, as you call it?’

Isabel blushed. ‘Not … not altogether physically, if you mean that. Neither of us felt that that was the right thing to do. But I think I do understand him. When he asked me to marry him, everything seemed suddenly simple, and clear, and I knew that I should accept.’

‘I’m glad,’ Amy said softy.

They were silent for a moment, and then Isabel asked in a lighter voice, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just writing in my diary. Or no, not even that. Looking back, instead of facing up to today. I was reading about the day I was presented. It seemed so important then, and so completely pointless now.’

Isabel laughed. ‘Oh dear, yes. I remember mine. I was directly behind Anne Lacy, who looked so beautiful no one could take their eyes off her. I could have been wearing trousers and a lampshade on my head and no one would have noticed.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. The Prince of Wales danced with you twice, the very same evening.’

‘Oh, do you remember? Mother thought our hour had come at last. Now you’ll have to marry him instead.’

‘Not a chance. I can never think of a word to say. Insipidity personified. I don’t know why Mother doesn’t try for him herself. She’s much more his type.’ They were still laughing, and Amy was thinking Is this the last time we’ll do this? when they heard quick, unsteady footsteps outside.

‘Is this a private party, my sisters, or can anyone join in?’

‘Richard.’

He was still wearing his school change coat, and his hair and trousers were soaked with rain.

‘I walked. From Soho, can you imagine? Tell me quickly, am I disinherited completely?’

‘Nothing was said. Father just gave us one of his white, silent looks when he realized you weren’t coming.’

‘Poor old tyrant. What about Mother?’

‘Worried about the table. You were promised to Lady Jaspert.’

‘Oh, dear God. Well, too late to worry now. And look, I’m not all bad. I’ve brought us this. The little man promised me that it was cold enough. Chilled further, I should think, by being hugged to my icy chest.’

From the recesses of his coat Richard produced a bottle of champagne. ‘Do you have any glasses in your boudoir, Amy, or shall I nip downstairs for some?’

‘You’ll have to go and get some. And change your clothes at the same time or you’ll get pneumonia.’

‘Well now, isn’t this snug?’ Richard reappeared in a thick tartan dressing-gown that made him look like a little boy again. He had rubbed his hair dry so that it stood up in fluffy peaks. He opened the champagne dexterously and poured it without spilling a drop.

‘Where have you been?’ Isabel asked. ‘It doesn’t matter about the party, and I’m glad you’ve turned up for the wedding itself, but you’re much too young to be wandering about in Soho, and drinking. Don’t pretend you haven’t been.’

‘I wouldn’t pretend to pretend,’ Richard said equably. He had developed the habit of looking out at the world under lowered eyelids that still didn’t disguise the quickness of his stare. He raised his glass to his sister. ‘Long life and happiness to you, Isabel. And I suppose that has to include Jaspert too. May his acres remain as broad as his beam and his fortunes in the pink like his face …’

‘Shut up, Richard,’ Amy ordered. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I came up on the four o’clock train like a good little boy. I was going to have tea with Tony Hardy at his publishing house and then come home to change. You remember Tony? As a matter of fact he’s coming to the wedding. I got Mother to ask him. D’you mind him being at your wedding, Bel?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Good. It will be a help to me, you know, to have an ally amongst the ranks of duchesses. So, I went decorously to meet Tony at Randle & Cates and we talked about an idea I have. Then Tony suggested that we go across to the pub for a drink. Somehow one thing led to another, after that. We had dinner with a jazz singer and a woman who owns a nightclub, and about twenty others. It was a good deal more interesting than school supper and study hour, I can tell you. I lost Tony in the course of it all, and when I finally decided to extricate myself I realized that I had laid out my last farthing on your champagne and had to walk all the way back here in the rain. There you are. Nothing too culpable in that, is there?’

‘Tony Hardy should know better,’ Isabel said.

‘Unlike you, Tony knows that I can perfectly well take care of myself.’

‘I’m jealous,’ Amy told him. ‘I’ve never met a jazz singer in my life. Didn’t you look rather peculiar, a schoolboy amongst all those people?’

‘I was the object of some interest,’ Richard said with satisfaction, ‘but no one thought anything was peculiar. That’s the point, you see. Everything is acceptable, whatever it is.’

‘It’s not exactly the conventional way to behave.’ Isabel was frowning.

‘I’m not conventional. Surely you can’t condemn me for that? I don’t think Amy is, either. But you are, Isabel, and that’s why you’re going to marry Peter Jaspert tomorrow in the family lace and diamonds, in front of half the Royal Family and with your picture in all the dailies.’ Richard stood up and put his glass down with exaggerated care. Then he went and put his arms around his sister and hugged her. ‘I hope you’ll be so happy,’ he said seriously. ‘For ever and ever.’

Isabel smiled at him, her anxiety gone. ‘Thank you.’

They drank their champagne, and Amy made them laugh by recounting the excitements of her evening. ‘Every time Peter mentioned Ramsay MacDonald or the balance of payments or anything unconnected with horses or crops, Uncle Edward would shout “What? What? Can’t understand a thing the boy says.”’

At last Isabel stood up. ‘I’d better try and get some sleep. I think I’ll be able to, now I’ve had something to drink. Clever of you, Richard.’

‘Anything to help. I have to say one serious thing before you go.’

Isabel turned back again, alarm showing in her face.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a delicate point, but… well, someone ought to raise it. Just in case it’s been overlooked. Are you quite clear on the facts of life? Bees and birds and so forth? It’s just that Jaspert might seem to behave pretty oddly tomorrow night, and you should know why.’

‘Richard, you are horrible. I know everything I need to know, and a good deal more than you.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ he said quietly. ‘Good night, Isabel darling.’ All three of them hugged each other.

After Isabel had gone, Richard said, ‘Will it be all right for her, do you suppose?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Amy was heavy-hearted again.

‘You’ll still have me, you know,’ Richard reminded her.

‘I don’t think I will, by the sound of things. You’re already overtaking me.’

‘Poor Amy. It must be harder, being a girl. You should do something. Something other than getting measured for frocks and going to lunch, or whatever it is women do all day. The world’s full of girls out there doing things. I saw some in Tony’s offices today.’

‘I know,’ Amy said. ‘Of course I must do something. I don’t think I’m going to find a Peter Jaspert for myself, and I can’t sit about here or at Chance for ever. The question is, what could I do? I’m not any use for anything.’

‘That doesn’t sound very much like you,’ Richard said gently. ‘It’s your life to live, isn’t it? Not anyone else’s.’

Lady Lovell’s prayers had evidently been answered. The morning of Isabel’s wedding was bright, and frosty clear. When Bethan got up she went straight to the window. The pavements were shiny wet, but the sky was the translucent pearly white that would later turn to icy blue. The bare plane trees were motionless. There was no wind, either.

‘Let’s hope it’s the same there,’ Bethan murmured. She looked at the cheap alarm clock beside her bed and saw that there were a few minutes to spare. A quick note dashed off to Mam wouldn’t be quite the same thing as Bethan being there herself, but at least they would know that she was thinking of them.

All ready here, at last [she wrote]. The coming and going, you wouldn’t believe it. Thirty people here for dinner last night, and that just a small party of family to meet Mr Jaspert. Miss Isabel stayed in her room. She is as lovely and calm in the middle of it all as I would have expected her to be. My poor Amy is going to miss her, I know that much. I wish I could have been there with you, Mam, to see Nannon and Gwyn today, but I know you’ll all understand. They would have given me time if I’d asked, I’m sure of that, but with having had my two weeks and with Amy needing me, I felt I should stay here with them. But just the same I will be thinking of you at home.

How sad it is that the minister has gone from Nantlas. I would have liked to think of Nannon walking up to the Chapel in her white dress, on Dad’s arm, and everyone coming out on their steps to wave, like they used to. It’s not so easy to imagine the Ferndale registry.

I wonder what you’re doing this minute, Mam? Perhaps you’re sitting by the range with Nannon, brushing her hair. Or no, most likely you’re making the sandwiches. Is the Hall up at the Welfare all decorated with streamers, like they used to do it? At least you’ve got Dad there to help you. Did he understand about the money I sent? I don’t need it for anything here. I wish it could have been more, and of course Nannon should have a reception on her wedding day as fine as anyone in Nantlas. I know how hard it is when there isn’t the work. I’m sure that things will have to get better soon. Pits can’t stay closed for always, can they? I hope Nannon found the bit of money useful too. I’d have got her a present of course, but if she’s going to be living with Gwyn’s family for a bit perhaps she’d rather have it to spend on herself, instead of pots or blankets. Think of my little sister being married. How glad you must be that Gwyn’s in the Co-op and not down the pit. He may be a bit old for her, but he’s a good, kind man and I’m sure he’ll make Nannon happy. I’ll be thinking of you all day, you especially, Mam.

It’s fine and clear here, and I pray it is in Nantlas too.

God BLESS you all, your loving BETHAN.

Bethan folded her letter and put it into the envelope. There would be just enough time to run out to the post with it before going down to Amy.

Mari Penry sat back on her heels and stared at the sullen grate. They had let the fire in the range go out to save coal, and now she couldn’t get it going again with the dusty slack left in the bucket.

‘Are you cold, Dickon?’ she asked the child. He didn’t answer, nor did she expect him to, but she always made sure to include him in everything. Dickon was sitting in his usual place, close to the range in the little low chair that Nick had made for him. Mari pulled her own thin cardigan closer around her and went to feel his hands. The fingers were cold, but his stomach under the layers of woollens was warm enough.

‘Well then,’ she said, hugging him. ‘We’ll wait till your dad comes back, and then we’ll go up to the wedding party and leave the stupid old fire, shall we?’

Dickon looked up at her, and rewarded her with one of his rare smiles that broke his round, solemn face into sudden affection.

‘That’s my boy,’ Mari said. She went through into the front parlour to look out of the window for Nick. It was even colder in here, with a dampness that seemed to cling to the walls and the few pieces of furniture. Mari pulled the lace curtain at the window aside and peered out.

Half a dozen children were playing chasing games from one side of the road to the other, and at the corner a knot of men in scarves and collars turned up against the cold were talking together. There was no sign of Nick in either direction. Mari sighed and straightened the curtain again. She would have liked to make a pot of tea, but without the fire she couldn’t boil the kettle.

‘Mari? You there?’ The back kitchen door banged. Nick must have come the other way, down the back entry. She ran through into the kitchen. Nick had picked Dickon up out of his chair and was swinging him up and down. Dickon was chuckling and pulling at his father’s hair.

‘I thought you’d left home, you’ve been gone so long.’

Gently Nick lowered the boy back into his seat. Dickon’s eyes followed him as he moved around the room.

‘Left home? Hardly,’ Nick said, with the bitterness that rarely faded out of his voice nowadays. He looked around, frowning. ‘It’s too cold in here for Dickon.’

‘I couldn’t get the fire going again, with that.’ Mari pointed to the bucket. ‘He’s all right, under his clothes.’

‘I got half a sack of good stuff. I’ll have the place warm in ten minutes. And I called in at the Co-op. Gwyn Jones is off, of course, but they let me have a loaf and some other bits for now.’

Nick had been up at the shut-down No. 2 pit, picking over the slag heap for lumps of coal. Mr Peris didn’t allow scavenging, as he called it, around his pits but the managers often turned a blind eye. Half the men of Nantlas were out of work now that the second pit was closed, and for many of them it was the only way of keeping their families warm.

Mari watched him busying himself over the fire.

‘I thought we could leave it,’ she said. ‘As we’re going up to the Welfare later.’

Nick shrugged. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

‘You would forget, wouldn’t you? Anything nice that happens, for once? All you can remember is meetings, and committees, and the Federation. Why can’t you leave it? You aren’t even a miner any more, are you?’

Nick seemed not to hear her. He put a match to a tight coil of newspaper, and a yellow tongue of flame shot upwards. Dickon crooned with pleasure at the sight of it.

‘Nick? Please, Nick.’ Mari’s shoulders hunched up, and she didn’t even try to blink the tears out of her eyes. ‘What’s happened to everything?’

Carefully Nick smoothed a sheet of newspaper across the front of the grate and shut the oven doors on it to hold it in place. Behind it the fire flickered up and began to crackle cheerfully. Only when he was sure that it had caught properly did he turn round to Mari.

‘You know what’s happened,’ he said. ‘And you know why. There’s no work for me, or for most of the men in this valley. We’ve eighteen shillings a week to live on, after the rent. The only hope for change in this industry is the lads themselves. We’ve got to win worker control some day, Mari, and the only way to do that is to go on fighting, through all the meetings and committees, as you call them, or starve to death first.’

‘Starve to death, then,’ Mari said, ‘For all the good any of you are doing.’

Nick’s arm shot out and he pulled her around so quickly that her head jerked backwards. ‘Never say that. Never, do you hear?’ Then he saw the tracks of tears on her cheeks, and remembered how rosy her cheeks had been when they were first married. Instead of shaking her, as he had almost done, he pulled her roughly to him. Her head fitted gratefully into the hollow of his shoulder and he kissed her hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I told you what it was going to be like, that first day down at Barry Island, didn’t I? Perhaps you shouldn’t have said yes. You could have married anyone you wanted. Kept your job up at the Lodge, instead of losing it because of me.’

‘I never wanted anyone else,’ Mari said. She rubbed her face against him, solacing herself with his familiarity. She knew all of him, the grim willpower and the stubborn pride just as well as his face and the set of his shoulders under the old coat, and she still loved him.

‘Mari,’ Nick whispered, ‘let’s go upstairs for half an hour. Dickon will be all right down here in the warm.’

She hesitated for a second, thinking longingly, and then she shook her head. ‘It’s too risky this time of the month. Next week, Nick, it’ll be all right then.’

‘I’ll be careful.’ He kissed her mouth, tracing the shape of it with his own.

She clung to him, his warmth warming her, but she said ‘No, Nick. It isn’t safe.’

I couldn’t go through Dickon again, she wanted to cry to him. Not the day he was born, nor the time after when we were finding out what was wrong. Not another baby. And if one did come, even if it wasn’t like Dickon, how could we care for it, on what we’ve got? There were too many families in Nantlas with hungry children. No more babies in this family. Not while the world was like this.

But Mari didn’t say any more. It was old, well-trodden ground between Nick and herself and she knew from experience that it was less hurtful to let the silence grow between them than to go round in the old, painful circles yet again. Nick let his arms drop to his sides.

‘Well. Put the kettle on, will you, my love? Let’s pretend that a nice pot of tea will do just as much good. And how could a pot of tea make you pregnant?’

Towards the end of the afternoon, when it was already dark in the valley bottom, the Penrys carefully damped down their fire and set off up the hill to the Miners’ Welfare. Dickon could walk almost as well as other children now, although it had taken him years of effort to learn, but he began to whimper with cold halfway up the street and Nick swung him up into his arms without breaking his stride. There were bright lights in the Welfare Hall and groups of people were coming towards it from all directions. Nick and Mari walked in silence, staring straight ahead of them. They quarrelled too often now, and it was growing harder to make up their differences as they would once have done, impulsively.

The Welfare was the heart of Nantlas now that the congregation could no longer afford a minister for the chapel. It was funded by the Federation, and people came to it for company, for books and classes, support and sympathy, and for the occasional celebration like Nannon Jones’s wedding that still managed to happen, somehow. The long, dingy green-painted hall was hung from side to side with paper streamers, salvaged from Christmas decoration boxes and forgotten Gala days. On the stage at the far end were the music stands and instrument cases of the choir and silver band, waiting for the climax of the evening when the singing would start. Beneath the stage on a trestle table covered with a white cloth, the wedding cake was given pride of place. Nannon Jones had baked it herself, and put hours of work into the carefully piped white icing. Down the length of the hall were more trestles decorated with red and green crepe paper, laden with neat plates of sandwiches, pies and cakes. The Welfare tea urns stood ready, and there were barrels of beer as well, and even bottles of sherry bought with the money Bethan had sent.

The bride and groom stood at the hall door with their parents, welcoming the guests. Gwyn Jones was almost forty, shortsighted and weak-chested, but he was a popular manager of the Co-op. You could always get a bit of help from Gwyn when you were short, the Nantlas women said. Local opinion approved of the match, even though Nannon Jones was hardly into her twenties.

‘Well done, well done,’ the older guests murmured to each set of parents as they shuffled past. ‘And a fine spread, too. Well done to you.’

There was much admiration of the feast set out on the tables. Everyone understood the scheming and saving that must have gone into providing it, and appreciated the generosity of offering it to share. There were no whispers about trying to go one better, or making a show. Hardship had drawn the valley communities closer together.

Myfanwy Jones, the village midwife, stood at the door beside her husband. She was beaming with happiness. At least her youngest had found a good, solid man who would look after her and not ask her to live with the fear that he would walk out of the door one morning in his pit clothes and with his snap-box under his arm and never come back.

She greeted the Penrys with extra warmth as they came in. She never forgot any of the babies she delivered, but she was not likely to forget the night of Dickon’s birth.

There had been nothing unusual to start with. Mari’s pains had been coming steadily all evening and into the night, and Myfanwy had been reassuring her that the baby would be born soon. Then she had bent over to listen to the baby’s heartbeat, and it had gone. Mari’s face was suddenly grey against the pillows. The midwife ran to the top of the stairs and shouted to Nick, sitting by the kitchen range. ‘Run! Run up for Dr Owen, ask him if he’ll come down. She needs forceps.’ There had been a flutter from the baby’s heart as she listened again, faint and irregular, and then nothing.

The minutes dragged past.

Into the silence came the stumbling crash of Nick running back up the stairs. ‘He can’t come. His wife says he’s gone up to one of the children at the Lodge. Oh God, look at her. Save her. I don’t care about the baby, if you can save Mari.’

‘I’ll save them both,’ Myfanwy Jones said grimly. It wasn’t the first time that Dr Owen had been unable to come to a house that was unlikely to be able to provide him with his fee. ‘You’ll have to help me. Hold her, will you?’

Myfanwy knew what to do, although only doctors were supposed to practise it. She even had the right instruments ready in her bag, but only when there was no other alternative could she resort to her own skills.

She took the things out, not looking at Nick Penry’s dead white face. ‘Hold her properly,’ she ordered him harshly.

When Dickon was dragged out into the world his face and hands and feet were blue, and he was completely still.

‘She’ll do,’ Myfanwy said after a brief glance at Mari, and she bent over the huddled baby. She cleared the tiny air passages, and then tried everything she knew to make him breathe.

‘Come on, my darling,’ she whispered to him like a lover. ‘Breathe for me.’

At last, after eternities of time, there was a tiny, thin wail. Mari’s eyes opened and fixed on the baby. The blueness began to ebb from Dickon’s face and Myfanwy breathed again herself. Only when Mari was comfortable and the baby was wrapped up in his father’s arms did she say as gently as she could, ‘I think he will be all right for now. But I can’t say for … later. He went a long time without breathing. Do you understand?’

Mari was too weak to take anything in, and she didn’t know whether Nick had even heard her. He sat quite still, with the baby hugged to his chest, staring right through her, right through the wall and out into the street.

Six years ago, that was, Myfanwy remembered. The year after the explosion in No. 1 Pit.

‘Hello, my lamb,’ she said now to Dickon. ‘There’s the big boy.’

The child stared back at her. It was impossible to tell how much he understood.

‘Is he talking much yet?’ she asked Mari.

‘In his way.’ Mari smiled calmly. Nick had already walked past, down to the end of the room where the men were standing in a group at the foot of the stage steps. ‘I will. Thank you,’ she said. Someone was holding a plate out to her. She wasn’t exactly ravenous, they had eaten something before coming out just so that they wouldn’t look too hungry, but paste sandwiches, and cake, were almost forgotten luxuries. Mari took a sandwich and broke it carefully in half for Dickon.

When the food was all gone, and the room was full of a warm, satisfied buzz, Nannon’s father pushed through the crowd and went up on to the stage. The bride, pink-faced, with her husband beside her, stood just below. William Jones held his arms up.

‘Friends. Neighbours and friends. I’m not going to ask you to stop in your enjoyment for too long. Just to join with me in drinking the health of Nannon and Gwyn, and wishing them everything for the future. And in remembering the friends who can’t be with us tonight. My eldest daughter, Bethan. And my boy David, in London too, looking for work. Two boys from the other side of our new family as well, Gareth and Glyn, trying their luck in the Midlands. May they be lucky, and may we start to have some luck here too. Here’s to some better times for all of us. Cheers, now.’

He raised his pint glass, his red face glowing, and tipped his head back to it. There was an uproar of cheering and clapping and stamping on the wooden floorboards before he held up his hand again.

‘Oh yes. One last thing. We’ve got a new big man with us tonight.’

Faces were turning in the crowd, and heads craning. Mari realized with a sudden sinking fear that they were looking at Nick.

‘We’ve just heard now, elected Secretary of the Rhondda Branch of the SWMF. Nick Penry, a good Nantlas boy if ever there was one. Give him a clap now, for all his hard work in the past, and to come.’

Mari listened to the clapping, frozen.

It was an important post, although an honorary one. It meant that Nick would be working at a level in the Federation that represented all the pit lodges in the Rhondda valleys. Beyond that it would give him a voice at the top level, on the main South Wales executive. Mari knew that it was the beginning of real power for him, the beginning of real influence, in the world that he cared about. Nick was a Communist because its importance confronted him every day of his life.

And yet, he had never even mentioned to her the possibility of his election. Had they already drifted so far apart that he was sure of her disapproval, certain that she would not put her support behind him?

Mari was proud of him still, but she had lost the ability to tell him so. Just as Nick in his turn seemed to have lost the ability to sympathize with her fears and anxieties.

Mari bit her lips and looked across the room at him.

‘Speech! Speech!’ Nick was being pushed up on to the stage. She watched him, thinking how much at ease he looked on the platform. He wasn’t red-faced and awkward like William Jones, nor was he over-confident and strident. He was just Nick himself, and he smiled down at them as though they were all old and well-loved friends.

‘I don’t want to make a speech …’

‘Shame! Shame!’

‘Let the man speak, will you?’

‘… and neither do you want to hear one. I just want to say thank you for voting me into a position where I might be able to join in helping us, and the industry, back up off our knees.’

‘That’s it, Nick boy. You tell ‘em.’

‘I’m glad that Nannon and Gwyn Jones have given us something to celebrate together, tonight. This is all we’ve got left now, isn’t it? Staying together, all of us, whether it’s this village, or the Rhondda, or South Wales, or the whole community of miners all over the country. And what’s more …’

The room was quiet now. Everyone was watching Nick.

‘… that’s the only thing that really matters. So long as we’re together, so long as every one of us in this room, and in every pit and Welfare Hall across the country, believes that miners and not millionaires should run our pits, well then, we can win. Then our children can go to school in boots again, and our wives can go out to buy food for our families.’

There was a moment of complete silence before the clapping and cheering broke out again.

Oh yes, Nick, you believe it, Mari thought. It’s all you care about, except perhaps for Dickon. And standing up there, somehow you can make everyone else believe whatever you want. You’ve got a talent, sure enough. And you’re not the kind of man to waste a talent, are you?

The room was full of the warmth of friendliness. Mari lifted her head, watching her husband.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I told you I wasn’t going to make a speech. Let’s get on now and dance and sing, and forget everything for a few hours. We’re here to celebrate a wedding, aren’t we? I hope you’ll be very happy, Nannon and Gwyn. I hope you’ll be as happy as Mari and I have been.’

Nick had ducked down from the stage and was pushing his way through the crowd. She saw his head, taller than the others, looking around for her. In Mari’s arms Dickon said ‘Da’ in a pleased voice and held out his arms to him. When Nick reached her side Mari said, without looking at him,

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Would you have wanted to know?’ As he always did, Nick met a challenge with a challenge.

‘Husbands and wives usually mention these things to each other. You make me feel like a stranger, Nick. And why wish that on Nannon and Gwyn? I wouldn’t want anyone else to have to enjoy our kind of happiness.’

‘You still make me happy, Mari,’ he said softly. He put his arms around her and Dickon, and forced her to look up so that he could see her face. ‘I’m sorry if I can’t do the same for you. I’m still the man you married, you know. Just the same.’

Regardless of the crowd around them he kissed her, warm against her cold cheek. ‘I could prove it to you, if you’d only let me. Come on, dance with me. At least then I can hold you close and still look decent.’

‘What about Dickon?’

‘Give him to your mam to hold, for God’s sake. Just this once.’

The band was assembled on the stage, and after the tootlings as they tuned up they swept into a waltz. Couples stepped out on to the creaky floor. Amongst the replete pink faces and careful best clothes there was an atmosphere of revelry almost forgotten in Nantlas.

‘Why do you blame me,’ Nick whispered, ‘for trying to make it possible for nights like this to happen every week?’

‘I don’t blame you, my love.’

Mari carried Dickon over to her mother. The child allowed himself to be handed over uncomplainingly, but he never took his eyes off his parents.

‘That’s better,’ Nick said. ‘And now, may I have the pleasure?’ He looked proud, and happier than she had seen him for a long, long time.

Mari saw his arms held out to her, and she smiled. Her eyes met Nick’s and she caught his happiness. Suddenly, surprisingly, she felt like a young girl again. Their quarrel was all forgotten. The music lifted her spirits higher and she stood for a second swaying in time to it. Then Nick’s arms came around her and they were off across the splintery wooden floor.

Mari tilted her head back so that she could look at him. Nick saw a flush of colour in her cheeks, and a light in her face that turned her back into the pretty, merry Mari he had married. He held her tighter and they spun in the dance together.

‘Nick?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, my love?’

‘I’m still the woman I was, you know. And I’m … glad you’re doing the work you are.’

Nick stopped dancing. His head bent quickly over hers and he kissed her. And all around them the waltzing couples smiled and nodded to each other.

When Mari’s eyes opened again they were sparkling. For a moment the world felt a warm and festive place.

‘Come on, Nick Penry,’ she ordered him. ‘Let’s dance.’

They moved again, holding each other close. Nick was humming to the music. With her head against his shoulder Mari could hear the sound of it, deep in his chest.

It had been a beautiful wedding. There was no need to cry, Amy told herself. Adeline hadn’t cried at all, and the bride’s mother was almost expected to do that. Amy thought of her mother at the front of the packed, flower-massed church, her skin like white silk against the black velvet Cossack coat and her hair flaming red under the shako hat. No, Adeline wouldn’t have cried. Not in front of the Royal Family, and Lady Colefax, and Mr Baldwin. It had been a great day for Adeline and she had orchestrated it perfectly. Nothing as spontaneous as tears would have been allowed to spoil it.

Amy wrung her facecloth out in cold water and pressed it against her eyes. Just five minutes up here in her room, just five minutes to collect herself, and then she would go downstairs again.

The new Mr and Mrs Jaspert had driven away at last, only a few minutes ago, but the party had barely faltered. Adeline’s parties were famous, and the departure of the principals was going to make no difference to this one. Or two, rather, Amy decided. In the huge, long room on the first floor the grandees were dancing stiffly under the chandeliers. There was a buffet supper in the dining room, where the pink claws and ridged shell backs of lobsters stood ferocious guard around the silver bowls filled with black beads of caviar. In the library the tables were set out for cards. But in Adeline’s white drawing room and further up the house, there were noisier, smarter people. Amy had glimpsed a woman in a man’s evening suit, with her hair cropped and brushed flat to her head, and another with her arms loaded from wrist to shoulder with ebony and ivory carved bangles. This party, where the sharp babble of conversation rose to the same crescendos as the jazz, was the one Amy wanted to join. She had been slipping into it, listening to the talk and searching for someone she knew well enough to attach herself to, when Bethan came to whisper to her that Isabel and Peter were leaving. They had gone down to the hall together.

Isabel was standing in a blaze of light while Peter shook the hand of everyone in sight. Her going-away suit was the colour of honey, the ankle-length skirt and slim jacket making her look taller. A cloud of fur framed her face, and a single jaunty feather stuck straight up from the top of her little tilted hat.

‘She looks lovelier than I’ve ever seen her,’ Bethan murmured.

The sisters kissed each other.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ Isabel promised. Amy gripped her arms. Perhaps she was imagining it, but she thought that under the soft stuff of her suit Isabel was trembling.

Lord and Lady Lovell, perfectly correct, were saying goodbye now. Peter Jaspert shook their hands firmly, and kissed Adeline on both cheeks. Then the front doors were open and a gust of cold air swept around them. Peter put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and hurried her out to the car waiting at the foot of the steps. There was a flurry of waving and shouting and then the car roared away. They were gone, and not even Isabel had any idea where Peter was taking her. Glass, his normally impassive face creased by the faintest of smiles, was shutting the doors again. Amy felt a moment of pure, panicky loneliness. She turned round to see that her mother was already on her way up the great curving staircase. Her black dress left her back completely bare, with an impertinent flat bow at the bottom of the deep V. Gerald Lovell, without a backward glance, was on his way to join the card-players in the library. From now on, the party was Adeline’s business.

Amy had run up through the crowded house to her bedroom. The day had gone so quickly, she needed a moment to straighten it out in her head, and to fight back the threatening tears. Even in the silence of her room, she could only see a series of images flashing in front of her eyes. Isabel drifting down the aisle on Gerald’s arm, a column of pure white silk and lace, with points of blue light flashing from the diamonds in the Lovell tiara. Peter at the altar, turning back the lace veil to touch his lips to Isabel’s. Eight tiny bridesmaids and pages in white satin, all blinking at the press photographers clicking at them. Gerald and Adeline, standing stiffly at the head of the stairs to receive the guests, and Richard’s studiedly impassive face winking at her over his starched collar. Isabel’s small hands closed over Peter’s as they pressed the silver knife into the crenellated cake. And Bethan, sobbing quietly in the corner of Isabel’s empty room after the last leather trunk had been carried away. Bethan had cried, on the day when her own sister was being married far away without her.

Amy screwed the facecloth up into a ball and flung it away from her. She faced the mirror and addressed herself squarely.

‘Pull yourself together. Isabel’s married. Of course Isabel was going to marry. Would you have wanted to stop her? What you should do, Amy Lovell, is go downstairs and drink some champagne. Look for someone to dance with. And tomorrow, find something positive to do instead of feeling so sorry for yourself. Is that quite understood?’

The face that looked back at her was still watery-eyed and pink around the nose, but it was less obviously woebegone. Amy shook her head briskly, and her gleaming hair swung in exotic, unfashionable waves around her face. She picked a brush up from the dressing table and whisked some colour on to her cheeks. ‘Much, much better. Someone might actually ask you to dance now.’ As she stood up, Amy thought she caught the faintest drift of Isabel’s flowery perfume. She took up her own crystal bottle and squirted it determinedly around her. Then she shook out the folds of her dress, thinking approvingly that the pale lavender colour actually suited her, and marched to the door.

The white drawing room was packed to the walls.

Amy edged her way slowly into it, listening to the snippets of talk that floated out to her.

‘Ninety per cent pure shit, darling, but ten per cent genius.’

‘A tonal symphony. Poetic asymmetry.’

‘And so we went for a Friday-to-Monday, but there was not a soul there …’

‘Hello.’ Someone pushed out of the crowd and stood squarely in front of her. Amy looked up to see Tony Hardy. He still appeared to have inherited his evening clothes from a misshapen relative.

‘Don’t you remember me?’

‘Tony? Of course I do. Isabel always said I should call you Mr Hardy, not Tony.’

Tony smiled at her. ‘I remember. Should I call you Miss Lovell, now?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘So, Amy, are you looking for someone in particular?’

‘Just someone to talk to. I know quite a lot of these people by sight, and a few of them well enough to say how d’you do, but no one at all to attach myself to and ask why I feel like an ostrich in my own home at my own sister’s wedding. Except for you, that is. Oh, I could go downstairs and dance with Johnny Guild or somebody, and then go out on the balcony and do some damp embracing. But if I stay up here I thought I might be able to step across to where debutantes don’t tread. Like Richard did, last night.’

Amy was conscious that she wasn’t sounding quite rational. It must be the champagne. Another of the day’s images drifted into her head, of the Duchess of York in the church, floating blue feathers framing her face.

Tony was looking at her levelly. ‘You don’t look anything like an ostrich. You look … extremely beautiful. I always thought you would be more beautiful than Isabel, once you grew into yourself.’

Amy stared back at him. He had very light hazel eyes, and eyebrows that went up in peaks. She felt a faint flush of colour rising in her face.

‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down,’ he said. ‘Debutantes never tread anywhere near me, will that do? And I think I can promise that I won’t embrace you, damply or otherwise.’

As she followed him, Amy wondered why that seemed to amuse him.

They found a sofa in an alcove. A tall fern in a white marble urn dipped in front of them like a screen. Tony put a champagne glass into her hand.

‘Now. What’s the matter?’ he asked her.

Amy considered. It was partly losing Isabel, of course, but only partly. There was something bigger than that, less tangible and so more frightening. Amy had the growing sense that she was adrift, directionless and isolated. She had watched Isabel dancing through her successful Seasons, aware of the options open to her and coolly accepting them. Isabel had chosen, and today was the celebration of her continuing to walk on down the broad, comfortable path laid down for her from the day of her birth. Amy had never felt at ease in the way that Isabel seemed to. When she looked at her own version of the path it was flat and uninviting, yet the country on either side of it seemed hostile, or impenetrable, or obscured. She was both bored and apprehensive, disenchanted and anxious, and the combination was uncomfortable.

‘I … don’t quite know what to do. Or how to talk about it,’ she began.

Tony leaned back and lit a cigarette. ‘Is it a love affair of some kind? Or something awkward like a baby? Surely not?’

Amy laughed in spite of herself, and Tony thought that when her face came alive it was enchanting. Most men, he considered, would find her irresistible.

‘No. No, nothing like that. Much less identifiable. I think I’m frightened of not being able to belong. Not to the kind of life that’s offered to me, or even to the kind of life that Mother has created for herself. I don’t want to find myself a scion of the shires, or a bright hope of the Tory Party like Peter. The men I meet are all the same, and they make me feel the same. Rather chilly, and hollow.’

‘Not very enticing,’ Tony agreed.

‘So if I’m not going to marry …’

‘I wouldn’t assume that immediately, you know. How old are you? Nineteen?’

‘Yes. Old enough to know, I think.’

‘Perhaps. Is it likely that you might prefer women?’

Amy held out her glass to have it refilled. She was laughing so much that the froth spilled over her fingers.

‘Tony, what d’you think I am? If not pregnant, then a lesbian?’

‘I don’t know what you are,’ he said equably. ‘You tell me. I’m just eliminating the worst possibilities.’

‘I don’t think I prefer women. A man kissed me once, years and years ago, and that meant more to me than all the men I’ve met and danced with and half-heartedly allowed to kiss me ever since. He was the waiter, Luis, in the hotel in Biarritz, do you remember?’

‘Did he now? Yes, I remember him. Go on.’

Amy took a deep breath. ‘I want something to do. To believe in, if you like. Something real, and valuable. Richard asked me last night what I do all day, and it amounts to shopping, being fitted for clothes, meeting girlfriends and having lunch, going to parties and staying in people’s houses. Helping Father to entertain when Mother isn’t here. At Chance, riding and playing tennis. Seeing neighbours and people on the estate. It isn’t enough.’

‘For many people, you know, it would be more than enough. It would be Paradise.’

Amy’s face went a dull crimson. ‘I know,’ she said humbly. ‘Does that condemn me completely?’

‘No, it doesn’t. Let’s try to think. What could you do?’

‘Richard says that your office was full of girls doing things. I can speak French and German and a little Spanish. I can paint a bit, and a few other useless things. Could I be a secretary? Could I be your secretary?’

Tony tried not to let his smile broaden. ‘I don’t think so. Most secretaries have to be able to type and take shorthand, you know.’

‘I could learn.’

‘Yes. Look, there must be other girls of your class in your position. They must do things to which there could be no possible parental or social opposition. Can’t you think of any?’

‘There’s Welfare work. Charity organizing. That sort of thing.’

‘Wouldn’t that do?’

Amy’s disappointment showed. ‘It means sitting on committees for charity balls, and bazaars. Raising money. Addressing envelopes for appeals. I would have liked an ordinary job, perhaps something that might help people. Whatever they’re doing out there.’ She gestured over the heads of the crowd and beyond the walls with their white silk drapes.

Tony’s eyebrows worked themselves into triangular peaks. ‘Out there? In Bruton Street?’

‘No, damn it. Not Bruton Street.’

‘Amy, how much do you really know about ordinary people and the work they do?’

‘Nothing. I’m asking you to help me find out. Look, you took Richard somewhere last night. Would you take me out sometimes, too? I’d like to meet some people who aren’t anything like these. There isn’t anyone else I can ask. If I mentioned it to Johnny Guild, he’d say, “Oh, I say, Amy, what for? I hate slumming.” If I could broaden my horizons a little, it might help me to know a little bit better what I’d like to do. Is that reasonable?’

Tony sighed. ‘My dear. Downstairs you have the entire British aristocracy. If someone dropped a bomb now we’d have an instant socialist state. Up here is the cream of London’s fashionable intelligentsia. One notorious poet there. Two well-known actresses there, ignoring each other. A beautiful divorcee here with very high connections. What do you imagine you are going to gain by hanging around the Fitzroy Tavern with me? Or making little expeditions to gape at conditions in the East End. Or whatever romantic idea it is you’ve got in your head?’

Amy looked down at her glass. ‘These are Mother’s friends. The people downstairs are here because Father is who he is. The King’s Defender, and all that. I want a life of my own, Tony. A useful, ordinary life with the rewards of satisfaction.’ She was crying again. A tear fell and rolled over her knuckles.

Tony Hardy’s amused impatience evaporated. He thought that Amy had all the naïveté of her age and class, but without the cushioning of complacency. Her sincerity and her unhappiness were clear, and his heart went out to her.

‘Poor Amy. Here, handkerchief. Of course I’ll take you out and introduce you to some new people, if that’s what you would like. Don’t cry any more. Let’s fling ourselves into the throes of this party. There are dozens of people here I wouldn’t get a chance of seeing otherwise. If I arm myself with you, they can hardly cut me dead. Here’s some more champagne, to begin with. And in a week or two, if you would really like to come, we’ll go to a meeting organized by a friend of mine. It’s a political meeting, and it might interest you. Or more likely it’ll bore you to death. But there’s usually a kind of party afterwards, and people are certainly different. Different in the sense that they’re like one or two of the people in this room before they became fashionable or successful enough to be invited here by your mother.’

Amy missed the touch of irony in his voice, or else she chose not to hear it. Her face was alight. She dabbed the tears away with Tony’s handkerchief.

‘Thank you. I’d like that very much. Now, let’s fling ourselves, if that’s what you want to do. Is it the poet you’d like to talk to first? Colum O’Connor comes to Chance for Mother’s house parties sometimes. He used to like me to go for walks with him.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ Tony said drily. ‘Yes, please. Do introduce me.’

Amy went across and touched the poet on the arm. He beamed at her.

‘Well now, little Amy Lovell. Perfectly grown-up.’

‘Hello, Mr O’Connor. How are you? Do you know my friend Tony Hardy?’

Together, they worked their way around the room, greeting and talking. The faces Amy didn’t recognize, Tony did. Between conversations, Tony whispered quick, scurrilous histories to her. Amy was distinctly impressed, and intrigued. He seemed to have a far-reaching knowledge of the more colourful sides of London literary and political life.

After an hour, when they had reached their alcove again, Tony winked at her. ‘Thank you. That was useful. Now, d’you think we’ve earned some supper?’

On the way downstairs Amy asked him, ‘What do you do at Randle & Cates, exactly? Apart from gossip?’

Tony looked sideways at her, appraisingly, and then grinned. ‘Quite right, I do like gossip. I tell myself that it’s part of the job, listening to who thinks what and who’s doing what. I publish books, as you know. Which books I choose, or more often which books I nose out and coax people into doing, depends partly on what I hear, partly on what I believe in, and wholly on what will sell.’

‘Which is?’

‘Some poetry. No Eliots or Sitwells yet, but I’m working on it. Some politics. Not Peter Jaspert’s sort, I’m afraid. And some novels.’

‘What did my brother come to see you about yesterday?’

They came into the supper room. At the far end, at an empty table, was Richard. There was a champagne bottle beside him. His chin was propped on one hand and he was smiling a faint, remote smile.

They paused for a moment. Then Tony said smoothly, ‘He came to me with a proposition. Or rather more than that, a partly completed novel. I told him that he was too young even to think about it, let alone to carry it off properly. I also told him I would be interested to talk about it again in five years’ time. More than that, I don’t think I should say.’

Amy looked across the room at her brother. He waved, exaggeratedly.

‘I didn’t know Richard was writing a novel.’

‘I don’t think it’s the kind of book you would describe to your sister,’ Tony said, inaudibly.

‘Shall we go and join him?’

‘You found each other,’ Richard greeted them. ‘Nobody has found me, as you can see. I have consoled myself with champagne, and with imagining edifices of elaborate insults to every dowager who has strutted past the table. Sit down and keep me company.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘A little. Just a very little.’

Tony brought them plates of cold lobster and quivering aspic, and the first tender asparagus tips from Chance.

‘Tony is going to take me to a political meeting in a couple of weeks, and to the party afterwards,’ Amy remarked conversationally as they ate.

Richard glanced sharply from one to the other, and then his eyelids drooped again.

‘Is he? How nice. And how nice that you have suddenly developed a political awareness, Amy. I’m sure you’ll fit in amongst the comrades with glove-like ease.’ There was a small, awkward silence. Richard smiled innocently. ‘What have I said? Well now, have we enjoyed the wedding? The tyrants have put on a creditable show, I must say. Look at it all.’ He waved at the long table with chefs in tall white toques behind it, the supper tables crowded with guests, and the endless procession of couples between supper and the ballroom where the music was growing steadily more insistent. ‘Your turn next, Amy, as they say. Have you danced with a dozen officers?’

‘Not one, this evening,’ she answered, determined not to let Richard prickle her in front of Tony. She had seen him in this mood once or twice before. ‘I was hoping Tony might ask me.’

Richard snorted over his glass. ‘Tony doesn’t dance. At least, only in louche clubs where you would be very unlikely to encounter him. There’s a much more likely candidate on his way over here. I’m sure he’ll foxtrot you off your feet.’

Amy looked. Johnny Guild was bustling across the room. He was a captain in a very smart regiment, the same one that Peter Jaspert had once belonged to. Johnny Guild had been part of the guard of honour at St Margaret’s. He was in dress uniform tonight, very tight black trousers with a broad cherry-red stripe down the sides, and a cherry-coloured coat frogged with gold.

‘He looks,’ Richard murmured, ‘as if he’s just walked out of an operetta. D’you think he’s going to sing something in a light but agreeable tenor?’

Amy bit the corners of her mouth, hard. Johnny Guild was the most persistent and most harmless of her admirers.

‘Here you are. I’ve searched high and low. Amy, I was hoping you might have a dance or two left for me. ‘Evening, Lovell.’

Amy looked at Richard and Tony in the hope of rescue, but they stood up politely, clearly expecting her to go. She let Johnny take her arm.

‘I’ll telephone you in a few days, if I may,’ Tony said, ‘about that arrangement we made.’

Johnny led her away to the ballroom.

It seemed to be full of pink faces looming over white ties, tulle skirts that were beginning to droop along with the corsages, and the determined bray of voices against the dance music. Johnny took her in his arms. His hand against her bare skin felt moist and warm.

It was all depressingly familiar.

‘Who was that with your brother?’

Amy considered the possible responses, but in the end she simply said, ‘He used to be my brother’s tutor, years ago.’

‘Oh. Well.’ Nobody at all, she silently supplied for him.

When at last Johnny led her back to the supper room, the far table was empty. Tony and Richard were gone.

In the bathroom of the odd, florid hotel between London and the South Coast that Peter had chosen for their first night together, Isabel wrapped the heavy satin robe around her and tied it carefully. She had brushed her hair until it crackled, dabbed herself with scent, and hung her honey-coloured suit up herself in the fake Empire cupboard. Her maid would rejoin them at Dover tomorrow, before they sailed.

Peter was waiting for her. She had heard the creak of his heavy tread as he moved around the bedroom, but now there was silence.

She breathed in slowly and deeply, trying to ease the hammering of her heart, and walked through into the bedroom.

Peter was already in the wide bed. He had drunk a bottle of wine over their late dinner, and two brandies afterwards. His face looked red against the pillows.

‘I thought you were never going to come,’ he whispered. He held up the covers, beckoning her in beside him. Isabel hesitated. She couldn’t get into bed in her robe, but was he expecting her to take it off?

‘Shall I turn out the lights?’ she asked.

‘No. I want to look at you.’ Peter’s voice was hoarse.

Obediently Isabel unwrapped the robe again, slipped it off and laid it across the foot of the bed. Her silk nightdress, made for her in exactly the same shade, was cut on the bias so it clung to her, with a translucent lace inset from the mock-demure high neck to the top of her breasts. Peter didn’t even glance at it. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Get into bed.’

Isabel did as she was told, sliding under the covers and then lying still, trying to make her stiff body relax. Peter’s large hands reached out and moved over her, groping for an opening in the folds of silk.

‘Take this thing off,’ he begged. Isabel sat up again and reached up to undo the tiny pearl buttons. She lifted the nightdress off over her head. Peter groaned, a long Uhhhhn sound that frightened her, making her think that he was ill. But he slid across the bed to her, and put his mouth on her breast. He began biting and gnawing at it, the blond stubble on his chin tearing at her skin. Isabel drew in her breath sharply with shock and disgust, and Peter lifted his head.

‘Like that, do you? That’s good.’

He pushed her backwards so that she was lying flat, and then hung over her. He was naked, and the heat of his heavy, hairy body shocked her again. Peter kissed her, rubbing all over her lips with his mouth and tongue, making little grunting noises under his breath. Isabel’s mouth felt frozen, with a choking sensation at the back of her throat as if she might vomit. This was nothing like the times Peter had kissed her before, gently, so that she had wanted to kiss him back and answer his tongue with her own. He had even touched her breasts before, reverently, with the tips of his fingers. Now he was kneading her as if she belonged to him.

You do belong to him, a cold voice reminded her. You are this man’s lawful wedded wife.

This bristly, panting creature with a sweating, screwed-up face was her handsome, confident husband.

Now Peter moved his hand down between her legs, parting them with his fist. His fingers probed at her, and then he groaned again.

‘Sorry. Can’t hold on,’ he whispered. His breath burned her ear. He heaved himself on top of her. Something bumped and then stabbed, bluntly. Isabel clenched her teeth to stop herself screaming. There was a jolt of pain and then her husband buried himself inside her. He began to rock up and down, tearing at her inside, and moaning in his throat. Isabel tried not to listen or to feel. She tried to retreat into some cold, white, locked place inside her head.

‘Oh God!’ Peter shouted, and then came a roar, so pain-filled that her arms tightened protectively around him. He jerked involuntarily, his face distorted and drops of his sweat falling on her face.

At last the jerking stopped and his full weight sank on top of her, the roar dropping away into a sob.

Isabel stroked his damp shoulders, staring up past him at the curlicued wallpaper on the ceiling. If it wasn’t so horrible, she thought, it would be funny. It was so absurd. And it was pathetic, and hardly human.

Peter slid away, leaving his hot stickiness all over her.

‘Was it all right?’ he whispered, like a child asking for a sweet.

‘Not very,’ Isabel said, longing for him to comfort her.

‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded huffy. ‘I was too excited, and I’d had a bit too much to drink You’ll like it better in the morning.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Good night, darling. I love you.’

Isabel lay very still, listening to his breathing deepening into snores. When he was properly, deeply asleep, she promised herself, she would get up and wash.

At least it was quick, she consoled herself as she waited. At least it was quick.