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.
