On the bowls, and the handles of the cutlery, and worked into the heavy linen napkins, was the same crest, a crowned lion in a wreath of laurel leaves. The footman offered bread wrapped in a napkin folded into intricate peaks, and the butler poured pale gold wine into the glasses. Reflections wavered back at once from the polished wood.
They sat waiting. The servants moved discreetly, making sure that everything was in place. Then the doors closed silently behind them.
Nick looked at Amy. He had been about to say something sharp, mocking, but then he saw how young she was, not more than twenty, and how anxious. It occurred to him that it had been brave of her to bring him here, and sit him down in the face of all this silk and gold. He swallowed the abrasive words and said, ‘May I eat this now?’
The anxiety vanished and at once her face was alive with sympathy and humour. ‘Of course.’
The soup was thin and clear, yet mysteriously rich with game and brandy. Nick’s disappeared in two spoonfuls, and the crusty bread with curls of yellow butter along with it.
Amy was smiling with pleasure. ‘Would you like some more?’
‘I think I could manage some.’
She reached for the bell-pull, a thick cream silk tassel, and then changed her mind. Instead she ladled the soup herself into Nick’s bowl. When all the soup and all the bread was gone, Amy touched the bell-rope. Nick raised his glass of wine to her.
‘What shall we drink to? To the revolution?’
Amy glanced up at the gold-traced ceiling and the heavy curtains with their tassels and drapes. ‘Not the revolution. Not here and now. I don’t think it would be … fitting.’ She was smiling, but Nick saw that she meant what she said and he felt the first flicker of liking for her. Amy Lovell’s loyalty would be worth winning. ‘I think we should drink to Jake. To his recovery, and his success.’
‘That’s more or less the same as drinking to the revolution. But here’s to him.’
They drank, looking at each other.
The butler came and took their plates away, and the footman’s eyebrows went up a hairsbreadth at the sight of the empty soup tureen. After the soup came fish, as light as foam with a shrimp-pink sauce.
When they were alone again, Amy asked tentatively, as if she was expecting a rebuff, ‘What was it like, marching to London?’
Instead of dismissing the question with a shrug, as he might easily have done, Nick said, ‘It was a long way. But not as hard as I’d expected. Most days we ate better than we would have done at home, and there are worse things than just being wet and cold and tired. And then there were times when it was all worthwhile. More than worthwhile. Like when the local trades council people came out to meet us even when their executives had directed them not to. We didn’t have official backing for the march, you see. It was all supposed to be a Communist manoeuvre. Yet the people came anyway. And other times, like when we made the Spike managers give us special status.’ Seeing Amy’s puzzled face, Nick put down his silver fork and grinned in the candlelight. He was struck by the incongruity of talking about these things to this girl in her pearls and her elaborate dress. ‘The Spike. The workhouse, you see. When there was nowhere else for us to sleep we’d go there. They’d try to put us up in the Casual. The Casual ward, for vagrants. One blanket, usually lousy. Two slices of bread and one mug of tea for breakfast. And in return you surrender everything at the door. No money, tobacco, matches, anything, allowed in the Casual.’ Nick laughed at Amy’s expression. ‘You didn’t know? Why should you? It’s a fine, proud system. If a man hasn’t got anything else, why should he need dignity? But we wouldn’t accept Casual status and we took over the wards anyway. And we had fried bacon for breakfast. Then when we marched up Park Lane and saw the crowds and heard the cheering, I’d have done it all over again for that.’
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