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
