Amy looked down at her glass. ‘These are Mother’s friends. The people downstairs are here because Father is who he is. The King’s Defender, and all that. I want a life of my own, Tony. A useful, ordinary life with the rewards of satisfaction.’ She was crying again. A tear fell and rolled over her knuckles.
Tony Hardy’s amused impatience evaporated. He thought that Amy had all the naïveté of her age and class, but without the cushioning of complacency. Her sincerity and her unhappiness were clear, and his heart went out to her.
‘Poor Amy. Here, handkerchief. Of course I’ll take you out and introduce you to some new people, if that’s what you would like. Don’t cry any more. Let’s fling ourselves into the throes of this party. There are dozens of people here I wouldn’t get a chance of seeing otherwise. If I arm myself with you, they can hardly cut me dead. Here’s some more champagne, to begin with. And in a week or two, if you would really like to come, we’ll go to a meeting organized by a friend of mine. It’s a political meeting, and it might interest you. Or more likely it’ll bore you to death. But there’s usually a kind of party afterwards, and people are certainly different. Different in the sense that they’re like one or two of the people in this room before they became fashionable or successful enough to be invited here by your mother.’
Amy missed the touch of irony in his voice, or else she chose not to hear it. Her face was alight. She dabbed the tears away with Tony’s handkerchief.
‘Thank you. I’d like that very much. Now, let’s fling ourselves, if that’s what you want to do. Is it the poet you’d like to talk to first? Colum O’Connor comes to Chance for Mother’s house parties sometimes. He used to like me to go for walks with him.’
‘I’m sure he did,’ Tony said drily. ‘Yes, please. Do introduce me.’
Amy went across and touched the poet on the arm. He beamed at her.
‘Well now, little Amy Lovell. Perfectly 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
