Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White - Rosie Thomas - Страница 16

The interview with the matron of the Royal Lambeth Hospital, when it finally came, was almost an anti-climax.

As she sat down facing the grey, starched martinet in her office lined with bound copies of nursing journals, Amy thought that whatever was coming it couldn’t possibly be as complicated as the course she had steered to get even this far.

Amy had first of all confronted Adeline with her plan, on the morning of Nick Penry’s departure. She had found her mother sitting up in bed, her breakfast tray pushed to one side. With her uncoiled mass of dark red hair fanned over the shoulders of her dove-grey silk robe, Adeline looked about eighteen years old. The white bedcovers were strewn with her morning post, engraved invitations and scrawled notes and long, intimate letters from abroad. The morning papers were still folded neatly as her maid had laid them out. Amy kissed her.

‘Darling, you look very pretty. What are you doing today? Shall we have lunch together? I’m going to the Carlisles’ this afternoon, but we could have a tiny lunch, couldn’t we? Or are you booked?’

Amy had picked up the newspapers and was staring at the headlines.

ANTI-COMMUNIST DEMONSTRATORS AND HUNGER MARCHERS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE BATTLE

HEAVY POLICE PRESENCE CONTROLS OUTBREAKS OF VIOLENCE 17 INJURED, 27 ARRESTS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE

There was a picture of the dense swaying crowd and the police horses massed in front of the platform that brought the taste of packed bodies and fear back into Amy’s throat. Nick’s head was somewhere in that dark throng, and her own, and Jake Silverman’s with the frightening sticky patch on his skull. Could she telephone the hospital this morning to ask how he was?

‘Amy? Darling? Share the fascination.’

Suppressing a guilty start Amy waved vaguely at the headline.

‘Mmm. The traffic was a nightmare all afternoon. Where did you and Violet go? You would think that people could rally somewhere a bit further off without disrupting all of London.’

Heaven forbid, Amy thought with a moment of savagery, that the hunger march should make any of us late for the hairdresser. The thought made her come out with what she wanted to say more coldly and abruptly than she had intended.

‘I want to talk to you about something important. I’ve been feeling for months that I don’t do anything. Anything worthwhile,’ she added firmly, seeing Adeline’s surprise. ‘I want to take up nursing. A proper nurse’s training at one of the London hospitals, not voluntary work.’

Adeline’s reaction had been to laugh, and then to be sympathetic when she saw that Amy was serious. It was a whim, of course. Perhaps a boy had disappointed her and this was her way of working off her troubles.

Adeline said consolingly, ‘Well, darling, I do know that sometimes one needs a change. London can get very stale. Perhaps we should have a holiday? We could go – oh, to Venice. Or Egypt, what about that? Bobbie would come, I’m sure, and we could ask the Carlisles, or Mickie Dunn. Wouldn’t it be fun?’

Amy sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering how to explain to her lovely worldly mother that she didn’t want a life like hers. Adeline had had her own unhappiness, Amy knew that, and she knew equally well that her antidote to it had been party after party, dancing and dining and travelling and dangerous, discreet liaisons. Amy loved her mother dearly but she was filled with a sudden, puritanical aversion to her world.

‘It would be lovely to have a holiday with you, Mama, but if everyone else came along too it would be exactly like here, or Chance, and we might just as well stay at home.’

Mickie Dunn was a witty, middle-aged dandy with a sharp tongue who was one of the stalwarts of Adeline’s circle and the Carlisles were young, rich and fast. All the signs were that Bobbie was Adeline’s newest interest. It wasn’t a party that Amy could even pretend to relish.

‘My love, how could we go on our own? What would we do?’ Adeline was genuinely surprised and Amy smiled at her.

‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be all that much fun. Anyway, it isn’t a holiday I need, it’s just the opposite. I want to work, Mama. I want to be of some use in the world. No, don’t …’ Amy reached out to hold her mother’s hand, preventing her from impatiently waving the idea away. ‘Please hear me out. I’m fit and strong, and I’m not stupid. I’m bored, that’s what’s the matter with me, and ever since we were little you’ve told us that boredom is a sin. If there was a war on, I’d be doing something useful.’

‘That’s hardly the same thing,’ Adeline said faintly.

‘Why should it be different, if we’re just talking about me? It’s not a whim, I promise. I’ve been thinking about what I should do ever since the wedding, although I’ve only just realized exactly what.’ Amy took a breath now and faced her mother squarely. ‘I want to train to be a nurse. There are always sick people everywhere. I can do something helpful. Something useful, not just go to parties and wait to get married. I’d be a good nurse, you know. I’m not afraid of work.’ Amy let Adeline’s hand go, ready to defend her decision. ‘And I like people. All kinds of people.’

Adeline sighed. ‘I don’t think you’re afraid of anything,’ she said. Looking at the set of her daughter’s chin Adeline thought how mulish Amy could be when her mind was made up. All through their childhood it was Isabel who had been the pliant one. But then, perhaps Amy would do best in the end. She had a little core of self-will that gave her a sparkle lacking in Isabel.

Adeline marshalled herself to dissuade Amy from this latest idea, but she suspected that the battle was already lost.

‘Darling, it would be such a terrible waste. You’re young and pretty, and you don’t have a thing to worry about. I want you to enjoy yourself, Amy. Do you have any idea how hard nursing would be for you? It would be all wounds, and bedpans, and people dying every day. All the horrible, ugly things that you needn’t even think about now.’

‘I don’t know yet how hard it would be,’ Amy said, thinking of Jake Silverman and the dark, sticky softness at the back of his skull, and her own fear. ‘I’ll find out, if you will let me.’

Seeing her face, Adeline shrugged and swept the litter of her correspondence into a haphazard pile. If the child was set on it, perhaps it wouldn’t do her any harm to spend a few weeks coming to appreciate her own good fortune.

‘Amy, I can’t pretend that I’m delighted by the idea. But I won’t forbid it absolutely. You must also talk to your father about it.’

Amy’s delighted hug enveloped her. ‘Thank you, darling. You’ll see in the end that it’s the right thing, I promise you.’ And now, Amy decided as her mother’s hair brushed her cheek and she smelt her expensive gardenia scent, she had better give her version of last night before Adeline heard about it from one of the staff.

‘I wished yesterday that I wasn’t so helpless,’ she said quickly. ‘I was in Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon. A man was hurt beside me and I helped to get him to hospital.’ As lightly as she could, she told the rest of the story.

‘A coal miner?’ Adeline repeated, as if Amy had said aborigine.

‘Here?’

‘He was tired and hungry, and he had nowhere else to go.’

‘Did Glass see to him?’

‘Well, no. As a matter of fact we had dinner together, and then he slept in Richard’s room. He went off first thing this morning.’

Adeline stared for a moment, and then her famous, enchanting smile flickered. If Adeline was amused, there was no need for Amy to worry about the episode.

‘I suppose we should thank God that Gerald wasn’t here. I can’t imagine what he would say over breakfast to a coal miner brought home as a house guest by his daughter. And I hardly dare to think of you in all that violence. You might have been hurt yourself. Did Violet adopt a miner too and take him home to Lady Trent?’

‘Violet wasn’t there. It was just me.’

‘Dear me, Amy. Don’t make a habit of being so unconventional, will you?’

No, Amy thought, there wasn’t any likelihood of it becoming a habit. With sudden regret she realized that Nick Penry really had gone, and there was no reason why she should ever see him again.

The matron put on her rimless spectacles and ran her fingers down Amy’s letter of application.

‘You have your parents’ consent, of course, Miss Lovell?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Amy said meekly.

She had telephoned Gerald at Chance, imagining him picking up the receiver in the gun room where the installation had eccentrically placed it. The leather-bound game books going back to the turn of the century were shelved beside it, and Gerald often turned back the pages, frowning over the day’s bag of twenty years ago. In the last entry under his name, one of a small party of guns out after grouse, Airlie’s total was eleven birds. He had been a fine shot. Richard had refused even to be measured for his guns from Holland & Holland.

‘I’m not interested in slaughtering small animals for the fun of it,’ he had insisted, white-faced against his father’s scorn.

‘Well, Amy, what is it?’ Gerald demanded. He disliked the telephone, and avoided it wherever possible. Amy sensed him listening impatiently as she explained. She had barely finished before he cut in.

‘Sick-nursing is a servant’s job. It’s not a suitable occupation for a girl of your sort.’ The tone of his voice was final. Amy was glad of the distance separating them as she took a deep breath and prepared for battle.

‘People of our sort have done it in the past. Lady Trent was a VAD in the War. They used the ballroom at their London house as an orthopaedic ward and hung the walls with bolts of material to protect the gilding. She often talks about it even now.’

‘That was wartime,’ Gerald said sharply. ‘That will never come again.’

‘War or peace, does it matter? I feel that now I’m grown up I would like to contribute something. If I have got anything to offer, don’t you think I should be allowed to do it?’

From the silence that followed Amy knew that she had struck a chord.

In a different voice Gerald answered at last, ‘Perhaps you’re more of a Lovell than I give you credit for. More than Richard will ever be. Airlie is the one you take after. He had something to offer, and he did it without stopping to think. He was a fine boy, Amy. I only wish you could have been older and known him better.’

Amy closed her eyes, ashamed that even unconsciously she had adopted a stratagem that touched on Airlie.

‘I remember him,’ she said quiedy. ‘I’m not brave like Airlie was. I just want to do a job that might be some use to somebody. I don’t even know why I’m so sure, but I know that job should be nursing.’

‘What does your mother say?’

‘Umm, she agrees that I can try it with your consent.’

‘Is she there? I’d better speak to her.’

‘No, she isn’t here now. She’s away for a Saturday-to-Monday.’

‘With?’

‘I think … the Earl and Countess of Carlisle.’

The silence was longer this time and Amy waited, feeling the weight of distance and formality and failures of understanding that separated them.

‘Very well, Amy. If you want to be a nurse, and God knows why you should, you have my permission. Now, let me get on with what I’m doing here in peace, will you?’

Amy replaced the receiver and stood for a long moment thinking. She had felt it before Isabel’s wedding, and again now. She had almost reached her father, almost seen him as he really was, and then at the last moment he had put up the angry, impervious screen again and shut her out.

‘Good,’ said the matron. ‘Now. Educational background. Adequate, I’m sure.’ She was filling in a form in very fast, spiky handwriting.

Amy told her about the governesses, and Miss Abbott’s school, and she nodded.

‘You will have to work hard, like all our probationers, to keep up with lectures and clinical studies in your off-duty hours. Do you understand that?’

Amy said yes, she understood, and the matron capped her pen with a decisive snap. ‘Your age and level of education are suitable, Miss Lovell, and you look more than strong enough for the work. Your background is a disadvantage to you, because there are not many girls of your class amongst our students. I won’t make a secret of the fact that it’s an advantage to us, because we are trying to attract more girls from better families into the profession. But I must make it clear from the start that you can expect no special treatment or privileges because of who you are. You will be treated exactly as the other girls, and you will be expected to obey the same rules.’

‘I understand, Matron.’

Rapidly the matron began to outline the conditions of Amy’s entry. She seemed to do everything at top speed, as if there was not a second to be wasted. Amy felt intimidated and energized by her in equal proportions.

‘You will be enrolled as a nursing student of this hospital for three years, after an initial trial period of one month. You will receive free board and lodging, and you will live in the nurses’ hostel like the other girls. You will work a one-hundred-and-ten-hour fortnight, which will include full day shifts, split day shifts and night shifts in accordance with the rota system. Lectures and study will be in addition to those hours, and you will be permitted three weeks’ holiday per annum. Your salary in the first year will be twenty-five pounds, thirty in the second and thirty-five thereafter. You will be provided with free uniform dresses, aprons and caps but you will be required to provide your own regulation stockings and shoes. Laundry bills will be deducted from your salary. The next intake is in four weeks’ time, Miss Lovell. There is a waiting list for studentships at this hospital, but for the reason I explained I am prepared to waive it in your case and offer you a place at once. Do you wish to accept it, under the conditions I have outlined?’

Amy remembered the red and cream corridors she had been hustled through to reach the matron’s office and the glimpses of long wards with straight, white rows of beds. She smelt the reek of disinfectant and heard the squeak of hurrying rubber-soled shoes, the crackle of starched skirts and the clang of mop-buckets in cupboards stacked with harsh soap and hospital towels. This would be her world for fifty-five hours a week, one hundred and ten hours a fortnight, and with three weeks’ holiday a year.

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I accept. And I would welcome the chance to start as soon as possible.’

The matron almost smiled, the first glimmer of cordiality that Amy had glimpsed in her. ‘Welcome to the Royal Lambeth, Miss Lovell.’

As she retraced her steps towards the outside world, Amy saw the hospital quite differently. Passing the wards, she peered in and saw the people in the beds, old men and children and one room lined with babies’ cots, all different and all needing different things. She looked at the nurses’ preoccupied faces under the stiff white pleats of their caps, and wondered if any of them would become a friend. A senior doctor with a flotilla of juniors behind him brushed past her, and one or two of the young men glanced back curiously at Amy.

The hospital wasn’t just a grim Victorian pile smelling of illness. It was a world in itself, occupied with the realities that she knew she was missing at Bruton Street. In four weeks’ time she would be joining it.

Outside there was a single circular flowerbed crammed with egg-yolk yellow wallflowers in the macadamized strip that separated the hospital from the busy main road. Amy beamed at the hideous flowers and then up at the building’s red-brick height towering above.

‘I’ll be seeing you soon,’ she said aloud and then she turned and almost danced out of the gates into the traffic.

The hospital was across the river, in a part of London she hardly knew. No one she knew had ever had any connection with the hospital or the area it served, and it was for those reasons she had chosen it, although Matron must never know that, Amy reminded herself. Matron, of course, believed it was the Lambeth’s distinguished reputation that had attracted her.

A cab, heading back to the West End and civilization, accelerated towards her. Amy almost hailed it, and then she stopped herself.

‘Begin as you intend to continue,’ she ordered. She let the cab sweep past, and then with her hands in her pockets she began to walk towards Westminster Bridge. The sun, with the first heat of summer in it, shone on her head, like a blessing.

*

On the evening of Amy’s interview at the Royal Lambeth, Isabel was sitting alone in her drawing room at Ebury Street.

She looked up at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was a pretty clock with an enamelled face, a wedding present from one of the Jaspert cousins.

Eleven o’clock.

She folded up her embroidery without glancing at the soft blues and purples of the pansy she had completed this evening. Peter hadn’t telephoned, but that could mean anything. If he had gone to the House he might be attending a debate, or meeting colleagues from any of the committees he served on. If he had gone on to his club from the City, he might be drinking with his friends, and simply have forgotten the time. Either way, she would not wait up for him. It was a decision Isabel was making increasingly often, and as it always did it brought both relief and a twist of regret.

Slowly she went upstairs and made herself go mechanically through the routines she had laid down for herself, creaming her face and hands and brushing out her hair until it crackled under the bristles. When she had finished Isabel looked at her face in the mirror. It seemed that the roundness of girlhood had disappeared and the new face was hollower, and sadder. Perhaps if she had her hair cut off, so that she looked as sleek and shiny as enamel, it would give her back some of the confidence that seemed to be ebbing away with every day of her marriage.

Isabel glanced at the door of Peter’s dressing-room, connecting his bedroom to hers, and suddenly heard the silence of the house. It had been with her all evening, ever since the solitary formal dinner she had eaten with Peter’s place laid and unoccupied at the other end of the table.

Yes, she would have her hair cut off.

The silence stretched on, mockingly unpunctured by her small decisions. It wouldn’t make a fraction of difference, Isabel thought, whether she cut her hair or not.

She was lonely here, amongst her pretty furniture and her china and pictures and flowers.

Isabel hung up her robe and got into bed, and then lay quietly looking round the room before turning off her light. It was all just as she had expected it would be, and yet in the midst of all the things, nothing like it at all. Usually when her thoughts ran on like this Isabel forced herself to turn them aside, but tonight a new fear made her want to confront them.

She had never tasted loneliness before she was married, and she had never dreamed that it would be lying in wait for her. She had believed, in all her innocence, that marriage would be a communion between herself and Peter forever. She had imagined that they would live in their lovely house, well provided with friends and families, but still within a core containing just the two of them.

It wasn’t like that, Isabel had discovered. The core was rotten.

When she wasn’t lonely, when Peter was with her, what she mostly felt was fear.

She made her racing thoughts slow down so she could consider that.

She was afraid of her own husband, and she had been afraid of him since their wedding night. The fear bred the loneliness, and the loneliness increased her fear. It had grown all through their time in Italy. The loveliness of the place had made it worse for her because the beautiful days only faded and brought the nights again.

None of the careful descriptions she had read, nor Adeline’s little talks, had prepared her for those nights. When she had imagined it, Isabel had thought that married love with Peter would be gentle and slow, a tender expression of his feeling for her. He had been careful of her during their engagement. And yet, once she was in his bed he took her body as if it was his by right. And her body recoiled from the coarse touch of his hot flesh, from the taste of his breath and the weight of him pinning her down, and his painful, blunt invasion of it.

At first she had tried to tell him that the things he did hurt and frightened her. Embarrassment, and a reluctance to hurt him, made her explanations vague and faltering. Peter had been embarrassed too, and his embarrassment made him angry. Isabel began to see that he didn’t know how to control himself when he was aroused, and he simply deflected with anger and impatience all the questions they might have asked one another.

Worse, as the weeks of their honeymoon went by, Isabel understood something else about him. Her very reluctance, and the way she shrank from his big body, only aroused him further. When he saw that she was afraid, he seemed to need to take her more violently still. She knew that he would never admit that, even if he understood it himself.

So Isabel protected herself with a barrier of passivity, a pretence that she felt nothing. Now that they were at home again she had devised a set of wifely rules that she made herself obey every night. If she could do everything she was supposed to do in preparing for bed, without hurrying or skipping anything, and still be asleep before he lumbered into her room, well, then, that was perfectly fair. But she mustn’t pretend. If she was still awake when he came to her, she would let him, and she would stare over her husband’s shoulder into the soft darkness. She would lie still and try to fight back the nausea, and suppress her longing to scream out and struggle away from underneath him.

In the beginning, the daytimes were better. There were enough times when they were comfortable together, as they had been before the wedding. Peter was simply her husband, as she had dreamed he would be, on the evenings when they entertained successfully, or sat quietly together in their drawing room with the clock ticking. At those times Isabel had felt that their lives could, after all, be salvaged. Then the nights came, and the weight of her guilt at her sexual inadequacy and her revulsion, inextricably connected, came down on her again. There weren’t many comfortable times now.

They couldn’t talk about it. It seemed, already, much too late.

There was something else too.

Isabel had always thought that she would be pleased, when the time came, and proud. Yet the probability ahead of her loomed like a threat tonight. If she had a baby it would be born of the secret, hideous core of her marriage that she was trying so hard to conceal.

Isabel started guiltily. The silence was broken. Downstairs the front door slammed and she listened for and then heard the sound of Peter’s steps. It was too late to turn the light off. He would have seen it from the street, and anyway it was against the rules she had set for herself.

Hastily she picked up a copy of Vogue from her bedside table and began to flick through it, listening. Peter came heavy-footed up the stairs and then went into his bathroom down the corridor. Isabel heard the lavatory flush and waited, discovering that she was holding her breath. Once or twice Peter had gone straight into his bedroom and, from the sound of it, gone to sleep immediately. But tonight the footsteps sounded too firm and steady for that.

A moment later her door swung open. Peter was red-faced and his black tie was crooked, but his eyes were steady as he stared in at her.

‘Waiting up, eh? That’s heart-warming.’

Isabel put her magazine down and said in a neutral voice, ‘You’re very late, darling. Have you been somewhere important? I was rather expecting you for dimmer.’

Peter steadied himself on the way with a hand out to Isabel’s spoon-backed chair and then plumped down on to the bed. Isabel moved her legs away from the weight of him. He was frowning as he bent to untie his shoes.

‘Don’t for God’s sake start cross-questioning me before I’m in the house. I’ve been to the Coles’ for dinner, if you must know. Met him at the club and then went back on the spur of the moment.’

‘Couldn’t you have telephoned?’ Isabel asked mildly. ‘I would have liked to come too.’

Peter flung his shoes into the corner and then stripped off his jacket and shirt. ‘You made no secret of not liking them when I did take you. Why go through the performance again?’

It was true enough, Isabel thought. Sylvia Cole was strident, and Peter’s close friend Archer Cole was an ambitious politician whose climb up the parliamentary ladder had left him no time for finesse or social graces except when it suited him to switch them on.

Was an evening with Peter in their company preferable to being left at home alone? Isabel didn’t know, any more. At least she would have been with her husband, as a wife should be. And now he was turning on her with his bright blue eyes reddened with food and drink and the vein in his neck throbbing beneath his ear.

‘I’m glad you’re still awake,’ he said, his voice changing from belligerent to conciliatory. ‘Come on.’ His arm came round her neck and he lifted her off the pillows to kiss her. His mouth felt hot and spongy against hers and Isabel tried and failed to make her own relax.

‘Peter.’ She twisted her face aside. ‘My head aches tonight.’

His fingers grasped her chin and turned her face beneath his again. ‘I’ll stop it aching,’ he said. He was pushing her down underneath him, half lying across the bed and reaching down inside her nightdress. The fear that was always lurking inside Isabel now sprang up, suffocating.

‘I don’t want to,’ she gasped, struggling to free herself.

‘Well, I want to.’

He was very strong. Isabel rolled her head sideways to look at him, trying to gauge what stage he was at. Peter had a weak head for alcohol. Even when they drank together, glass for glass, she could see the signs of it in him before she felt them herself. When he was drunk he was oblivious of anything except getting what he wanted. But when he was drunk it was very quick, and she could bite the fear back and count, saying the numbers very clearly in her head like a litany, until it was over.

She didn’t think he was drunk tonight. Usually that was worse. It took longer, and he wanted things that made her shiver and the fear was mixed with humiliation and disgust. The fingers of one of his hands were winding themselves in her hair, and the others were fumbling and stroking, trying to coax her along with him.

‘Lovely Isabel,’ he murmured. ‘Do something, will you?’ He was wheedling her now, and that was even more frightening.

‘What?’

‘Roll over. Look, like this.’ Pulling and pushing at her, he made her roll over so that her face was pressed into the lace pillow. Then he was on top of her and she felt a shock of disbelief and then a wave of terror as she realized what he was trying to do to her.

‘No,’ she whispered into the muffling pillow and then, almost screaming, ‘No.’

His face was over her shoulder and she glimpsed the fine, blond hairs of his moustache pricking against the lace ruffle.

‘Let me try,’ he coaxed her. ‘I’ll be so gentle.’

And all the time he was pushing at her, trying to force his swollen self into the wrong place.

Isabel writhed from side to side, trying to escape him. But the more she struggled the tighter he held her. He was suddenly deaf and blind to the fact that she was Isabel, and the fighting, clawing creature that she had become seemed only to excite him further. His eyes were screwed tight shut and his face was drawn up into a scarlet pucker.

Isabel felt the disgust hardening inside her like a stone.

Peter was murmuring ‘Oh yes you will, oh yes you will,’ over and over again. Now he almost had her where he wanted her. Her wrists were imprisoned in one of his hands, and with the other he kept her head pressed down into the bedclothes. The weight of his torso pinned her down and his thick, muscular legs between hers kept them forced wide apart.

The murmuring stopped abruptly as he hoisted himself for an instant and then forced himself into her.

Isabel screamed, once. The pain was so severe that she thought she was split in half, but worse than the physical pain was her humiliation. That Peter should do this to her. That a man who had told her he loved her and promised to honour and cherish her should treat her like the lowest, filthiest object.

If this was love, this and the other nights separating her from the day of her marriage, then she couldn’t bear it.

At that moment, something snapped inside Isabel. The tears burnt her eyes, but she felt as if some vital part of herself had escaped from the body lying on the bed with Peter Jaspert jerking above it. She still felt the pain, and the tearing at her inner flesh, but she could stand outside herself and watch it happening with icy detachment.

She both felt and saw Peter slithering in his own sweat against her back.

She felt her tears, and saw her wet face against the white pillow. And then, when his shout came and his big body bucked over hers, she watched his contortions with cold, cold carelessness.

As soon as he had finished with her Peter rolled away and lay exhausted on his back with his forearm over his face.

Isabel was sobbing, and as soon as her body was her own again the blessed detachment from it was lost to her. She was just Isabel again, crying with fear and pain and revulsion. Where would she go from here? What would happen to them both now?

At last, without moving his sheltering arm or trying to touch her, Peter said, ‘Isabel, don’t make a thing about it. It isn’t so very terrible, you know. Lots of men need to do it like that. Don’t pretend it hurt you more than it really did.’

She heard the blustering, defensive note in his voice and knew that he was ashamed. It had happened before, to a lesser degree. He wouldn’t admit anything, but he would try to be gentler with her now and she would be reminded of the man she had dreamed into existence before her marriage.

Taking a deep breath to control the sobbing, Isabel said, ‘You have no right to force me. You can’t force me to do what disgusts me.’

She sensed him wincing at the word, and then he said coldly, ‘There is no force in marriage, Isabel. You are my wife.’

‘Not your possession,’ she bit back at him. But she knew that Peter wouldn’t hear her. He sat up and pulled the cover carefully around him. Except when he was excited, Peter was conscious of his nakedness.

‘I don’t know what to do with you, Isabel. God knows, I’ve tried hard enough. I’ve never known a woman as stiff as you. I thought it was just maidenly decency before we were married, but now I’m beginning to wonder.’ A note of vindictiveness crept into Peter’s voice. ‘It’s like poking a bolster for all the response you make.’

And this was her husband, Isabel thought. Saying these things, hurting her like this.

‘What … what am I supposed to do?’ she asked.

‘You are supposed to enjoy it. Other women do, believe me.’

Isabel flinched and stared down at her fingers twisted in the ribbons of her nightdress. Peter had known other women and they had enjoyed it. Of course he would have done before they were married, Isabel thought. She was not so naïve as to imagine he was as innocent as herself. But then, if exactly the same things had happened to other women and they had enjoyed them, then clearly it was herself who was at fault.

Fleetingly she thought of Adeline and the physical pleasure she had suspected lay at the heart of her mother’s changing friendships and then, as always, she sheered away from the hint of coarseness in that.

‘I don’t, Peter. I … can’t.’

Help me, she was going to say. Try to be patient. But he gave her no time for that. Peter made a small, angry noise. He stood up and gathered his scattered clothes and then banged through the door into his dressing room.

For a long time Isabel lay dry-eyed in the crumpled bedclothes, staring at the closed door. As the pain and humiliation receded, a little of the detachment came back to her. The man who came to her bed wasn’t the man she had married. He wasn’t even the man who lived the other hours in the well-ordered house with her. He was another person, a stranger, and she would have to learn to exist with him. At the prospect of the years ahead Isabel went stiff in the sheets that still smelt of him.

In the morning, Peter had gone out long before Isabel came downstairs and she was glad of that. The mornings were difficult enough at present anyway.

Taking her cup of weak tea and lemon with her, she went into the drawing room and dialled her doctor’s number.

Yes, the secretary confirmed. Of course Mr Hardwicke would see Mrs Jaspert this morning. Would eleven-thirty be suitable?

Peter’s Daimler and chauffeur were at Isabel’s disposal in the mornings, but instead of ordering the car round she slipped out of the house and took a taxi to Mr Hardwicke’s consulting rooms in Devonshire Place. At eleven-thirty exactly she was shown into the doctor’s room.

It was time to have her suspicions confirmed.

Mr Hardwicke was Adeline’s doctor and he had attended to the childhood ailments of all three Lovell children. The big room with its waxy floral arrangements, polished desk and green leather examination couch were so familiar to Isabel that she didn’t even glance around her. Mr Hardwicke had crossed the room to greet her and now he was shaking her hand. She forced herself to smile and focus on what he was saying.

‘ … since you were married. Congratulations, and so forth. How time flies. It hardly seems a year since you were a little girl down with that nasty bout of measles. Dear me. Sit down here, now.’ Behind his desk again the doctor folded his hands and beamed at her. ‘Well, Mrs Jaspert. What can we do for you today?’

Carefully Isabel took off her cream leather gloves and laid them on her lap, smoothing the fingers flat. The big solitaire diamond in her engagement ring flashed at her.

‘I think I’m pregnant.’

‘Well, well. That’s very suitable. Well done. I’m sure you’re right. Tell me the symptoms, will you?’

Isabel told him, keeping her eyes fixed on her folded hands.

‘That sounds like it to me. Well now. We’ll do a couple of little tests, and I’ll examine you to make sure everything’s in perfect order. Then you can go home and tell Mr Jaspert the good news. I’ll call in my nurse, and perhaps you would slip behind the screen there and undress and then put yourself on the couch so we can take a look at you?’

Isabel did as she was told. She stretched out on the white towel laid over the green leather and the nurse put a blanket over her. The doctor’s face was wreathed in smiles as it loomed over hers, hovering unnaturally close and then dissolving back again with the light flashing off the gold-rimmed spectacles.

Isabel fought against the nausea and the faintness. The doctor’s voice boomed in her ears.

‘Try to relax. Just a little examination.’

The blanket was taken away and Isabel almost screamed as his gloved fingers touched her thigh. It took all the shreds of her willpower to force herself to be still while the fingers explored her.

At the end of it, inexplicably it seemed, Mr Hardwicke was still smiling. Was it possible that he didn’t feel her shuddering? Isabel wondered.

‘There now. That wasn’t so very terrible, was it?’ He was peeling off his gloves, and the nurse tucked the blanket back again. ‘How long have you been married?’

‘Three months.’

‘And I can confirm that you are at least two months pregnant. Nothing at all amiss there. You’re very lucky, you know. Some young people have to wait for ever. Boy or a girl, would you like? Boy first for Mr Jaspert, I expect? You can get dressed now, my dear.’

Isabel was thinking of the hotel room in Florence with the view of the Duomo from the balcony, the high white bed and the nights with Peter. On one of those nights, then, it had happened.

‘Mrs Jaspert? Would you like to get dressed?’ The nurse was holding her clothes, one hand stroking the soft furs with unconscious envy.

When she was dressed again and sitting opposite the doctor at his desk, Isabel felt the nausea releasing its grip.

Mr Hardwicke was writing her notes, nodding and smiling. ‘You’re a healthy young lady, Mrs Jaspert. I foresee no problems at all, but perhaps you would like to consult an obstetric specialist? I can give you the name of the best man, or perhaps Lady Lovell will have some advice for you as far as that goes. Nearer the time of your confinement, perhaps? That will be in mid-November, so far as I can judge. During your pregnancy you should continue to live as normally as possible, eat a healthy diet, and take as much rest as you feel you need. Not too many parties, crowded rooms and late nights, eh?’ His eyes twinkled at her behind his spectacles. ‘Any questions you want to ask me?’

Isabel’s fingers tightened on her gloves. ‘Yes,’ she said abruptly. She knew what the question was, but she hadn’t tried it out in her head. She had been too busy concentrating on not fainting. ‘What about our … married relationship? Might it be dangerous for the baby to … to … Surely that would stop until afterwards?’

Mr Hardwicke leaned forward reassuringly. ‘Your married life can certainly continue as long as it is comfortable and pleasurable for you both. Some young couples stop in the last few weeks, others continue right up until the time of confinement. It’s a matter of personal choice.’

Isabel stared at him. She had been certain that she would be able to take her pregnancy back home with her like a shield.

‘But … I’d be afraid. For the baby, you know.’

The doctor was looking at her more carefully now. ‘There really isn’t any need to worry. Mother Nature has arranged things as logically as she always does. But if you do feel particularly anxious perhaps the best thing would be to discuss it with your husband, explain what you feel, and ask him to be extra gentle with you. It is his baby too, remember. Or would you prefer it if I spoke to him? I couldn’t recommend months of complete abstinence for a newly married couple.’

‘No,’ Isabel said hastily. ‘No, I’ll talk to him myself, of course.’

Automatically she reached for her handbag and pulled her fur around her shoulders.

‘Are you quite happy,’ the doctor asked gently, ‘with the physical side of your marriage?’

Isabel stood up. Her chair rocked precariously for a moment before she reached to steady it. ‘Yes. Perfectly happy.’

Mr Hardwicke’s smile had faded a little as he walked round his desk to open the door for her. ‘It does take a little time, you know.’

As he stood there, kindly and familiar, with his fingers not quite touching the doorknob, Isabel almost told him. She opened her mouth and moistened her lips, and saw his eyebrows go up a fraction as he waited. But his expectancy touched her reserves of pride and she squared her shoulders against him.

‘Like all kinds of other things in life,’ Isabel said brightly.

The doctor nodded, as if conceding a point, and opened the door for her. Isabel went down the wide, carpeted steps to the street, pulling on her gloves and smoothing the leather over each finger as if the fit of them was her most important concern.

*

Peter was home early, for once. Isabel was finishing her five o’clock cup of tea in the drawing room when he came in. He stood awkwardly in his City clothes, his newspaper in one hand, not quite looking at her and waiting to see how she would receive him. It was as if part of him wanted to apologize for the night before, but his stubborn truculence wouldn’t allow it. If Isabel was prepared to be civilized and pretend that nothing had happened, then he could do the same, but if she was still angry he could use that as an excuse to let his own anger flare up again.

Looking at him in the coolness of her new detachment, Isabel thought it was odd that Peter could handle his constituents and colleagues so expertly in his overbearing way, yet had no idea how to deal with his own wife.

Isabel smiled. ‘What sort of day did you have today?’ she asked him.

Peter shrugged with relief. So last night hadn’t happened.

‘Quietish. I may have to fly to Berlin tomorrow for a day or so to close a piece of business.’

Isabel nodded. She knew that Peter’s trading on the metal market was currently concerned with armaments, but she didn’t enquire beyond that.

‘Shall I ring for a fresh pot of tea?’

‘No, this will do.’

‘Cream?’

She gave her husband his cup and watched him sit down opposite her. The paper, already folded to the financial pages, lay beside him. She knew that he was itching to pick it up, but he was prepared to extend the truce a little further.

‘What about you?’ he asked stiffly.

Isabel looked down at her rings. ‘I have something to tell you. I went to see Mr Hardwicke this morning, and he says that I am two months pregnant.’

The clatter startled her and she looked up. Peter had put down his cup and stumbled forward from his low chair. Now he was half-kneeling, half-crouching in front of her. She saw that the polished black toe of his shoe had rucked up one corner of the pale rug.

‘Oh, darling. A baby?’ His big hands hovered and then came down over hers in her lap. Isabel looked at him and saw that his face was suffused with simple pleasure, all the self-sure imperviousness gone for the moment. She hadn’t expected that he would be so pleased.

‘In November, he says.’

Peter’s hands tightened over her fingers. ‘And is everything all right?’ After the shock of pleasure had come anxiety. Not for her directly, Isabel saw, but for the baby. It was his baby that would be important. Isabel had guessed that was how it would be, but she had underestimated how much it would mean to him. Now she revised the full value of what she possessed. She lifted her chin and stared straight into Peter’s eyes.

‘Mr Hardwicke says that I must be very careful.’

The anxiety in him intensified at once. ‘Careful? What’s wrong? If there’s anything, we’ll get the top man …’

‘Nothing’s wrong, Peter,’ she said smoothly. ‘He just talked about rest.’

‘Rest? Of course you can rest. You don’t do anything …’

‘And he forbade any kind of physical stress. Anything like that, until after the baby is born.’

Peter met her stare now, and his hands were heavy on hers. He was no fool, Isabel knew that. He understood at once what she was saying. She was offering his heir, whether or not the doctor’s warning was genuine, in exchange for her physical inviolacy.

For a long moment they went on looking at each other. It occurred to Isabel that they were locked in position like a tableau of a Victorian proposal, and her irrational desire to laugh was vaguely disturbing.

At last Peter stood up. ‘If there’s anything not quite normal, I think we should see a specialist. Hardwicke’s no more than a GP.’

‘I don’t think there’s any need for that,’ Isabel said firmly. ‘Mr Hardwicke has looked after us since we were babies, and I trust him absolutely.’

‘I see,’ Peter said, and she knew that he did. He turned away abruptly and Isabel felt confidence waking up and beginning to grow inside her again like the baby itself. Her hand rested protectively over her stomach. ‘We shall have to abide by Mr Hardwicke’s strictures, of course. Somehow or other,’ he added threateningly. Isabel suspected that he would go looking for physical gratification elsewhere, if he wasn’t doing it already, and in the relief of her first victory she couldn’t have cared less. The longing to laugh grew even stronger.

Then, with his characteristic ability to put what he didn’t choose to consider further right out of his mind, Peter was swinging around the room smiling again. ‘It will be a boy, of course. God, but the old man will be pleased. Have you told anyone?’

‘Of course not, darling. The father should know first.’

‘The father. Quite right. I’m going to telephone.’ As he passed her, he stroked her shoulder awkwardly. He looked, Isabel decided, just as he must have done when he was picked for his school eleven. He was halfway through the door before he said, almost pleadingly, ‘Well, we must have been doing something right, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Something,’ Isabel echoed expressionlessly.

‘We’ll make it work, after the baby comes. Just wait and see,’ he promised her.

Alone once more in her drawing room, with her hand still shielding her stomach, Isabel stared at the enamel clock on the mantelpiece.

At first sight, Amy didn’t recognize her. She was sitting waiting for her sister at a corner table in the Ritz dining-room. The lunchtime ritual was at its height, and the big room was alive with the muted buzz of greetings and conversation. Isabel was late, and Amy had begun to watch the doors as the maître d’hôtel swept forward to greet each new arrival. Even so, as the woman in the pale tweed Vionnet suit was ushered towards her table Amy glanced once and then away again. She looked like any one of a dozen other women lunching today, but she didn’t look like Isabel.

But then she stopped beside the empty chair and the waiter drew it back for her. Amy started in surprise and then collected herself.

‘Bel, darling, I’m sorry. I must have been miles away.’

‘I’m sorry too, for being so late,’ Isabel said. She smiled, but her face was tired. ‘I don’t know exactly what takes up so much time nowadays, but I’m always late. And I used to be so well organized. Forgive?’

‘Of course.’

It wasn’t just the new, intimidatingly elegant clothes. Isabel had always enjoyed shopping and fittings, whereas Amy hated them, and as Peter Jaspert’s wife Isabel could certainly afford to dress at the top couturiers. The cut of Isabel’s tight-waisted suit was perfect to a hairsbreadth, and the soft blue-grey tweed fitted her like a second skin. The silvery grey of her blouse with its extravagant bow-tied neck exactly matched the cloud of grey fox-fur around her shoulders, and there was a little hat in the same shade, tipped forward with a wisp of veiling.

‘Isabel, your hair.’

Amy was too surprised to hide the dismay in her voice. Isabel’s rich mass of dark red waves, her best feature just as it was Adeline’s, had been brutally cut back. Under the pert little hat was a hairstyle exactly like every other woman’s in the room — stiff-looking ridges drawn back to a flat little chignon at the nape of the neck. At a single stroke, Isabel had reduced herself to chic ordinariness.

Isabel was leaning wearily back in her chair and looking around her. ‘I know. What do you think? I thought it would make a difference. I forget now what kind of difference, but it doesn’t seem to have done in any case.’

It wasn’t just the hair, Amy thought. Isabel looked exhausted, as if all her old liveliness had been drained away. Her face was thinner, with a new, shuttered look to it.

Anxiety gripped at Amy. Whatever’s wrong? she was going to blurt out, and then from the corner of her eye she saw the black height of the head waiter, hovering. Isabel had picked up her menu but she was twisting it in her hands, unopened.

‘What shall we eat? I’m famished,’ Amy said, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

Isabel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not very hungry.’ Then suddenly she smiled, a thin approximation of her old smile. ‘D’you know what I’d really like? A glass of milk, and an apple. One of the russets, from Chance.’

‘I don’t suppose that would tax the Ritz kitchens too severely,’ Amy said. She was about to summon the waiter, but Isabel’s smile had already faded. ‘I’ll just have a plain omelette,’ she said tonelessly.

When they had ordered and they were alone again in the discreet bustle of the dining room, Amy put her hand out to cover Isabel’s. The big square diamond her sister wore sat cold and hard under her palm.

‘Isabel, what’s wrong?’

A trolley with a huge silver dome perched on it was wheeled past, followed by a phalanx of waiters with silver dishes balanced at shoulder height. Isabel turned her head away from the smell of the food.

‘Please, Isabel? Won’t you tell me? I know there’s something.’ Isabel forced herself to focus on the starched white tablecloth, her sister’s hand warm over her own at the middle of it.

‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m going to have a baby.’

Relief flooded through Amy. So that was it. It explained everything, the tiredness and the secretive look. It even explained the hair. It was a pregnant woman’s whim, and of course it would grow again.

After the relief came unalloyed delight. The news would please everybody. Both families. There would be a new baby for Bethan to look after … Amy wanted to run round the table and hug her sister, but she contented herself with squeezing her fingers.

‘How wonderful, how wonderful. A baby. I should have guessed. When?’

‘November, apparently.’

‘And how do you feel?’

‘Sick,’ Isabel said, and the comical mixture of expressions in Amy’s face brought back the urge to laugh. For some reason Isabel felt that she should suppress the laughter.

‘Oh, Bel, why didn’t you say something? You shouldn’t be sitting in restaurants. Let’s go home right away.’

‘There’s no need. I’m all right, really I am. Life can’t stop, just because you’re pregnant, can it? Anyway, I want to hear all about you and the nursing. When did you decide and when do you begin?’

The anxiety flickered again in Amy. Surely, as well as feeling tired and unwell, Isabel should be pleased with herself? The few expectant mothers that Amy had encountered positively glowed with pride. She could see nothing of the sort in Isabel’s thin, closed-in face.

‘Later. Tell me more about the baby first. Peter must be thrilled?’

‘Oh yes. He’s being marvellous.’

Marvellous meant that her husband came home nowadays and went straight to bed. She didn’t any longer have to lie shaking and listening to which way his footsteps would turn. Peter left her alone except for an indirect solicitousness that made her feel like a biological machine temporarily housing his baby. It was hard, Isabel discovered, to think of her pregnancy in any other way. There it was, growing and protecting her every day.

After it was born, what then? Isabel bundled the thought up hastily and pushed it away from her.

‘Do you feel all … fulfilled, and ripe, like pregnant women always look as if they feel?’

What she mostly felt, Isabel reflected, was cold, and empty. As detached from what was happening inside her as from everything else.

‘It’s early days yet, you know,’ she answered with forced brightness. ‘Wait till I’m huge and lying on a sofa all day, and then ask me. Do you have any free time when you’re a nurse? Will you be able to come and sit with me? I’ll miss you, Amy,’ she said with a sudden rush of real feeling. Amy was going off to do a proper job, moving into a world that Isabel would have no insight into, and she felt suddenly that Amy was her only link with normality.

‘Whenever I have an hour, I’ll come,’ Amy reassured her. ‘I miss you, too.’

Their food was laid ceremoniously in front of them. Isabel picked up her fork and prodded her omelette with it. ‘It doesn’t look edible at all,’ she remarked. ‘More like a piece of folded underwear.’ Then she began to talk very rapidly about her last fitting at Vionnet, and how her vendeuse had remarked on how slim she had become. ‘Not for long,’ Isabel added flatly.

The whole lunch was like that. Amy felt that they were moving elliptically around each other, almost touching before Isabel swung away again in her own eccentric orbit.

Isabel ate nothing at all.

Amy forced her food down, ordering more than she wanted to keep up a pretence of normality. To stop the talk from dying away into awkward silences she found herself chattering too brightly about her enrolment at the Royal Lambeth, then about Jake Silverman and the afternoon of the hunger march, and how Tony Hardy and Appleyard Street had led her there, and then at last about meeting Nick Penry and taking him home to Bruton Street.

A flash of the old Isabel followed that. She laughed almost naturally. ‘Amy, I don’t know anyone else in the world who would have done that.’

‘He had nowhere to go.’

‘You could have helped him to find somewhere. What made you decide to take him home?’

‘I didn’t decide. I just did it. He wasn’t the kind of man you hand out money or charity to. He was too … important for that.’

‘You liked him, didn’t you?’

Amy shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. Although he made me angry, too. For being so arrogant. No, not arrogant, exactly. Dominating, rather.’ But she saw that she had lost Isabel again. Her sister was looking away, and her face had gone taut.

‘Name any man who isn’t,’ she said, in a voice so low that Amy had to lean forward, and then wasn’t sure if she had heard correctly.

‘Tony Hardy,’ she said at once, but Isabel wasn’t listening. ‘Why do you say that?’ Amy persisted. ‘Is it Peter?’ Peter Jaspert, she thought. If you are doing this to Isabel …

‘Oh no,’ Isabel said deliberately. ‘Peter’s fine now.’ She was gathering up her gloves and handbag. ‘Do you mind very much if we leave? I think I’d like to go outside for a while.’

‘Of course.’ Amy found herself stumbling after her. The uniformed doorman sprang forward as he saw them coming and handed them out under the colonnade fronting Piccadilly. There were early flowers in the baskets hanging under the arches and Amy caught the sudden scent of them. If only they were safely at Chance together, she thought irrelevantly. The doorman’s piercing whistle brought a cab to the kerb. Isabel was about to step inside with Amy following her when she turned abruptly aside.

‘You take it,’ she ordered. ‘I’m going to walk somewhere.’ Amy found herself bundled inside, the door was slammed on her and the cab was swinging away. She turned to look out of the little rear window and saw Isabel, perfect in her modish clothes, hesitating under the arches as if she didn’t know which way to turn. But then, with a little shielding gesture that drew the soft furs up around her throat, she began to walk slowly westwards. Amy’s last glimpse before the traffic swallowed her up was of Isabel walking unevenly, as if she was playing the old, superstitious childhood game of not stepping on the cracks. Amy remembered how they had chanted the rhyme on town walks with Bethan.

If you step on a crack, you’ll marry a Jack,

If you step on a square, you’ll many a bear.

The anxiety that had nagged Amy all through lunch redoubled.

Something was badly wrong with Isabel, and the shutters seemed to have come down between them just when her sister might need her most.

Amy frowned out at the afternoon bustle of shoppers crowding the pavements, thinking of Isabel walking blindly through them, alone.

Well then, if Amy herself couldn’t help, perhaps Bethan might. Somehow, she vowed, she would see that Bethan was installed at Ebury Street.

Bethan wouldn’t allow any harm to come to Isabel.

Amy was still thinking about Isabel and Peter as she let herself in through the front door at Bruton Street. The wide hallway was empty and shadowy. The house seemed as quiet as always. Amy sighed as she peeled off her gloves. She took her hat off and threw it on to a stiff-backed chair, then ran her fingers through her hair and wondered what she was going to do with herself for the rest of the afternoon. Then she cocked her head to listen. The house wasn’t perfectly quiet after all. There was music playing upstairs somewhere, loud, brash dance music.

She was standing with her face turned upwards when Richard appeared at the head of the stairs.

Amy’s face lit up and she flung her arms open wide.

‘Richard! I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you.’

He ran lightly down the stairs and across the marble floor. Amy put her arms around him and hugged him with delight.

‘Such a warm welcome,’ he murmured. ‘Do I deserve?’ But Richard was smiling too, and he returned her hug with equal warmth.

Amy stood back to look at him. Her little brother was growing up, she decided. He wouldn’t be tall, but he was built neatly and he moved with fluid elegance. His half-closed eyes gave his face the same enigmatic expression it had worn since childhood, but Amy thought there was a new zest in Richard, a new relish for life. Adulthood would suit him.

‘I didn’t know you were coming home,’ she said. ‘Are you supposed to be here? Richard …’

‘Perfectly legit, sister dear. Mid-term break, y’know. Where are the tyrants?’

‘Father’s at Chance, of course. Mama was here yesterday, but I think she’s gone off to the country for a few days.’

Richard glanced at her. ‘All on your own, eh?’

‘I’ve just lunched at the Ritz with Isabel.’

His glance sharpened. ‘And?’

‘She’s expecting a baby.’

Richard hunched his shoulders, a comical gesture of resignation.

‘What could be more normal and natural? The primogeniture of a whole new generation of Jasperts? One can hardly be surprised, even though one may not view it with unalloyed pleasure. I have to say that any baby gives me the positive shudders. The smell, you know. But I dare say that Peter and Isabel are bursting with happiness and pride?’

Amy’s smile had faded now. She didn’t try to hide her concern as she blurted out, ‘I think Isabel’s unhappy. I’m worried about her. She …’

Richard held up his hand.

‘Wait. I’m ravenous. Starved to death. I can’t tell you not to worry until I have eaten five pieces of cake and drunk three cups of tea. On second thoughts, I shall probably need cucumber sandwiches and anchovy toast as well. Before you arrived I was going to ask for it to be sent up to the schoolroom. I was playing the gramophone up there, all alone, rather melancholy. Now you’re here we can have tea together and talk afterwards.’

‘Tea first, then. In the schoolroom.’

‘Race.’

Amy was protesting but she was already running too. They reached the stairs and pounded up them as if they were children again.

Later, when Richard had finished the last crumb of his last slice of cherry cake and had poured himself a third cup of tea, he settled a cushion behind his head and leant back in the depths of the battered sofa.

‘Now,’ he said.

Amy sat looking out of the window at the familiar view. Isabel and she had sat over their lessons and looked out at the same jumble of chimneys and rooftops. She explained her anxieties and Richard listened carefully, not interrupting her once.

‘I’m afraid that she won’t talk to any of us,’ Amy said. ‘I’m afraid that she will cut herself off. She’s proud and stubborn, you know, under that pliant exterior. She wouldn’t let us know if it had gone wrong.’

Richard looked full at her now. ‘If what had gone wrong?’

Amy made a little, awkward gesture with her hands. ‘The marriage. You know.’

Richard pursed his lips. ‘Not really. I make no claim to know anything whatsoever about marriage. As a perfect outsider, judging by the two or three occasions on which I’ve been at Ebury Street, Isabel’s marriage looks quite ordinary. Keen young politician, pretty wife to charm the constituents. A lot of mutual pleasure in their silverware and so forth.’

Amy nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve seen that too.’

Richard put down his cup and went over to the gramophone. He sorted through the scatter of records and slipped one on to the turntable. The dance music crackled again and he held out his hand to Amy. She let him draw her to her feet and put his arm around her waist. They were almost the same height, she noticed. They began to dance a slow foxtrot, their heels clicking on the ink-blotted boards of the schoolroom floor.

‘Dear Amy,’ he murmured. ‘You have such strong feelings yourself, and concealment of them is utterly beyond you. You love, and fear, and rejoice, and plunge into gloom and glee all in the space of half an hour.’

‘You are not so very impassive yourself.’

‘No. But Isabel is different. I think you must let her follow her own course.’

‘Are you telling me that I should mind my own business?’

Her brother swept her through a flourishing turn before he answered her.

‘No. I’m not telling you to stop worrying, either, because from what you say I believe there’s cause for it. All you and I can do is let Isabel know that she can confide in us and that she can trust us because we love her and support her and we always will, whatever Jaspert is or does.’

Amy smiled, then. ‘I wanted to hear you say that. I know quite well that’s all either of us can do. But it’s quite a lot, isn’t it? I know how much I rely on Isabel and you. How important you are to me. Will you … will you try to see her oftener? I may not be able to, so much, from now on.’

Richard looked squarely at her again. ‘Yes. I’ll do that. I’m sorry, Amy. I know I’m not much company for either of you. There are all kinds of things one does, you know …’

‘What kind of things?’

His eyelids drooped again. ‘Just things.’

Richard is much better at concealment than I am, Amy thought. She realized how much she loved him, and wondered a little jealously about his life.

The music stopped and they faced each other more happily.

‘May I have the pleasure of another dance, Miss Lovell?’

‘If you change the needle first, and choose something a bit livelier.’

When they started up again Richard asked, ‘And what about you, my dear ardent Amy?’

She grinned at him. ‘I have got news. I have enrolled myself as a student nurse. And I start at the Royal Lambeth Hospital in ten days’ time.’

He whirled her around in a wide circle so that her hair spun around her face. ‘A nurse? Starched cap? Night duty? Cocoa in the Nurses’ Home?’

‘Most definitely.’

‘I’m very, very glad. And I am proud of you.’ He kissed her, lightly brushing her cheek. ‘You’ll be a fine nurse. The Florence Nightingale of Berkeley Square. You know, Amy, you’re the only one of us with any real decency. If I had my hat on, I would take it off to you.’

His approval was so sincere and so valuable that Amy felt tears behind her eyes. He was the only one of her family who had understood what she wanted and believed in it. Even Isabel had received her news with polite bafflement.

‘I’m glad you think it’s a good plan,’ she said softly.

‘Well, now. What shall we do to celebrate? We could see a show and have dinner somewhere risky afterwards.’

Gratefully Amy seized on the idea. ‘I’d love to. Don’t you have to do anything else?’

‘One doesn’t have to do anything.’ Amy let the evasion pass. ‘And I’ve got another suggestion. Before you start nursing, why don’t you come up to the Fourth of June? I’ll introduce you to the Captain of the Eleven. Perfect specimen. Tall, broad shoulders, Apollo in flannels. No brain, of course, but you can’t have it all ways.’

Amy was giggling in the way that only Richard could make her. ‘Not my type. Not at all.’

He tucked her arm under his. ‘Never mind. Come anyway. I like to show you off.’

With his free hand Richard lifted the arm of the gramophone and then they went companionably down the stairs to change for the theatre.