waved the folder away. ‘I think I’ll just read the book itself, first.’
‘Do. And to think I was so approving of that Mr Hardy of yours, Amy. This is all his fault.’
‘He’s not mine, Mama. And it’s Richard’s fault. Tony Hardy’s a publisher and a businessman, and he will do whatever his acumen suggests. I’ll go down and read it in the library.’
‘Some of the reviews are really very good,’ Adeline called after her. ‘He’s a talented writer, you know.’
Adeline wasn’t angry, Amy thought, as she went back downstairs. She adored Richard, and from childhood he had been her favourite. Nothing he could do, however injudicious, would ever change that.
The green shades in the library were drawn against the hot sunshine. The room was cool, and smelt faintly of dust and leather. Amy sat down at the wide desk. Just for a moment, she closed her eyes and thought of Nick. He might have sat in this chair to scrawl the note he had left for her after the night of the hunger march. Do some more kissing, he had written. You might get to like it.
I do, Amy thought, smiling.
Then she remembered what she was sitting in the library for. With a faint sigh she opened Richard’s novel and began to read.
The Innocent and the Damned was short. Amy read it all, sitting in the quiet room, without looking up once. Then, when she had finished, she closed the sombre grey covers and sat quite still, staring unseeingly ahead.
It was all perfectly recognizable, yet painfully distorted because it was seen through Richard’s eyes.
‘Queer’s vision,’ she heard him say. They were all in it: the beautiful and sociable mother and the pretty sisters with their escorts. And the father, savagely drawn, cruel to the boy and remote from the man. Richard’s innocent moved in a world they all knew. It was a world of the Fourth of June, the Eton and Harrow match, Henley Regatta and country house parties and tennis. And then, as the innocence was eroded, another, parallel world emerged. It was a black world of corruption and degradation, pursued in the alleyways of Soho and the tattered streets of the East End. The knowing young man pushed deeper and deeper into it in search of what he wanted, and needed. The end came abruptly. No longer innocent, he was stabbed to death by his lover of that night in a deserted bar.
That was Richard’s metaphor for the progress of life. Light into dark, innocence into depravity, unstoppable. The bleakness of the vision frightened Amy. Was that what Richard thought, behind his smile and his flow of banter?
His book was sad, and also funny in macabre, characteristic bursts. It was brave, and a considerable achievement. And Amy thought that reading it would break her father’s heart.
The telephone rang on the desk beside her, startling her. She realized that she had been sitting in the same position for hours, and she was stiff from head to foot.
‘May I speak to Mr Lovell?’ an unrecognizable voice asked.
‘I’m afraid not. He’s out at lunch.’
‘Am I speaking to Lady Lovell?’
‘No. I’m Mr Lovell’s sister.’
‘My name is Corbett. The Evening Voice. We’re all very admiring of your brother’s novel, here. Perhaps you can tell me why he describes it as “nearly a novel”? It’s an unusual vision for a young man to conjure up, wouldn’t you say? Especially for the son of Lord Lovell? A future Defender of His Majesty, as it were? Of course, if it is fiction, but an imagination so strong …’
‘I can’t comment,’ Amy said coldly. ‘You would have to talk to my brother in person. Good afternoon.’ She hung up sharply, and then sat staring at the telephone, fighting the feeling of being invaded. So that was what Richard had meant by seedy fellows reading the laundry lists. She could only hope for Gerald’s sake that the lists weren’t too revealing.
The library door opened and Richard himself peered round it. ‘Ah-ha. Mama told me you were lurking down here. Was that one of the vultures?’
‘Yes. A horrible, insinuating man.’
‘Dear me, how they love a whiff of corruption in high places. “Peer’s Son charged with Immoral Behaviour”. They are positively fainting with delight at the prospect.’
‘Will it come to that?’ Amy asked in alarm.
‘Of course not. I’m far too circumspect.’
‘Your book isn’t circumspect.’
‘It’s fiction, darling. And it isn’t, technically, obscene either. What did you think of it?’
Looking at him as she framed her answer, Amy saw that her brother looked, oddly, more substantial, as if his overnight success suited him. And she also saw that he was anxious. He didn’t write to please, clearly, but he wanted approval. From her, at least.
‘I thought it was impressive,’ she said carefully. ‘Scabrous, but impressive …’
‘So kind,’ he trilled at her, covering his pleasure with flippancy, as always.
‘… and it will hurt Papa terribly.’
Richard’s face stiffened. ‘Our father has never thought about me,’ he said, ‘from the moment it sank through his hide that I couldn’t be Airlie all over again. I can’t adjust my life to please him, Amy. Truly I can’t.’
‘I suppose not,’ she said sadly.
Dismissing the thought, Richard put his arm through hers. ‘Come on. Let’s have some tea and I’ll tell all. I meant the book when I wrote it, deeply heartfelt and all that, of course. But it’s been the most wonderful tease since it came out. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Nervous, respectful reviews here, trying to convey the book’s essence without mentioning the dread word buggery. Darling, I’m so glad you’re a nurse and know all these things, tending those poor sailors down at Lambeth. It makes you so much easier to talk to.’
‘You’re thinking of Greenwich,’ Amy protested.
‘No, I’m not. I know my sailors. Anyway, po-faced rejections there saying it’s not a book they could review in a family publication. The literary crowd in two camps – no, don’t laugh – and every party one goes to divided right down the middle between people queuing to shake hands and people who can’t snub one fast enough. Who would have thought anyone cared? Imploring letters from old queens and violent threats from purple brigadiers pouring into Randle & Cates by every post. Tony’s been such a tower, the dear boy.’
‘What’s Tony’s reaction to all this?’ Amy asked, laughing in spite of herself.
‘Unbridled delight. It’s all shillings in the coffers, after all.’
As he always managed to do, Richard disarmed her. There was no point in judging or moralizing, because Richard was his own law.
He insisted on taking her out to dinner at the Ritz.
‘I’ve got lots of cash. Do let’s spend.’
He
