was carefully not looking at the visitor’s gaping boots and the lamp clipped to his belt like a proclamation.
Amy went upstairs to her room. She ripped open the sheaf of envelopes she had picked up downstairs and stared unseeingly at the invitations. Then she remembered that she was supposed to be dining at Ebury Street. She telephoned Isabel and told her that there was an unexpected guest at Bruton Street.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Isabel said. ‘There would only have been us, anyway.’
‘Bel, are you all right?’
Concern cut through Amy’s preoccupation. Isabel’s voice sounded as if she had been crying.
‘Of course. Call me tomorrow if you like. I’m not doing anything much.’
Amy hung up, frowning, and automatically set about changing for dinner.
In Richard’s bedroom Nick Penry prowled to and fro between the cupboards and the bookshelves. He picked one of the leather-bound stamp albums out of the row and looked through the carefully set-out lines of tiny, vivid paper squares. There were dozens of books neatly shelved, most of them on art and architecture, but there were volumes of poetry too. The copy of Paradise Lost looked identical to the one that Nick had lost with his pack. The old rucksack had been pulled off his shoulders as he fought to Jake Silverman’s side in Trafalgar Square.
The Welfare library would expect him to pay for a lost book, Nick remembered.
Nick had asked the superior footman if he could make a telephone call, and he had been shown into a vast room lined with books. There were little tables with the newspapers and boxes of crested paper laid out, and a wide, polished desk with a silver inkstand and a green-shaded lamp. He had sat at the desk in a green leather chair to telephone Appleyard Street.
He told the girl at the other end what had happened to Jake, and gave her the doctor’s message. The sob of relief in her voice as she thanked him suddenly made Nick think of Mari and Dickon, alone in the damp, cheerless little house in Nantlas. He was struck with a sudden, sharp physical longing to hold them both in his arms.
Nick resumed his pacing. There were silver-backed brushes on the tallboy, and in the heavy, mirrored wardrobe there were what seemed like dozens of suits and coats and polished shoes. If Mr Richard was the frowning boy beside Amy Lovell in the silver-framed photograph on the tallboy, he was hardly more than a child. How could a child need so many clothes; own so many possessions? With a sharp clatter, Nick replaced another photograph, this one of a beautiful woman lounging in a basket chair with a spaniel on her lap.
As he stood there, Nick felt the ugly swell of anger within himself. It was a familiar feeling. He had known it since early boyhood when he had caught it from his father. Nick thought of the anger as an infection because it made him helpless while it lasted, and it clouded his thinking. It made him vicious, as he had felt on the night of the explosion long ago at Nantlas No. 1 pit, and that was of no benefit to anyone. It was better by far to be clear-headed. That was a better weapon in the battle that he had inherited from his father and mother. They had died early, of deprivation and exhaustion, but Nick knew that he had enough strength himself to last a long time yet. Nick’s father had lived by the Fed, and his son had adopted his faith. As soon as he was old enough to think for himself, Nick had gone further still. He had become a Communist because the steely principles of Marxism seemed to offer an intellectual solution beyond the capitalist tangle that bled dry the pits and the men who worked them.
But yet sometimes Nick couldn’t suppress the anger. It came when he looked at Dickon, and when he watched Mari working in the comfortless back kitchen at home. And it came to smother him now in the rich, padded opulence of Amy Lovell’s home.
Nick slowly clenched and unclenched his fists, and then shook his head from side to side as if to clear it.
First thing tomorrow, he promised himself, he would be off.
The swell of anger began to subside again, as he had learned it always did. Deliberately he began to peel off his grimy clothes.
He was here, now. There was nothing he could do here, tonight, in this particular house. He didn’t know why the girl had brought him here, but something in her ardent, sensitive face worked on his anger too, diminishing it.
He would make use of the house, Nick thought, by taking whatever was offered to him. He found a plaid robe behind the door and wrapped himself in it. He stood his lamp on the tallboy next to the silver brushes and went across to the bathroom that the footman had pointed out to him.
A deep, hot bath had already been drawn. There were piles of thick, warm towels and new cakes of green marbled soap. The brass taps gleamed and the mirrors over the mahogany panels were misted with steam. As he sank into the water and gratefully felt the heat drawing the aches out of his body, Nick was thinking about Nantlas again. In Nantlas, baths were made of tin and they were hauled in from the wash house and set in front of the fire in the back kitchen. Then a few inches of hot water were poured in from jugs. He sat up abruptly, splashing the mirrors.
How much longer could they last, these gulfs? Between the people who had things and the people who didn’t?
Not for ever, Nick promised himself. Not for ever, by any means.
When he put the plaid robe on again and padded back to the bedroom he found that his clothes had been removed. In their place was a dinner suit with a boiled shirt and a stiff collar, a butterfly tie, even a pair of patent shoes that shone like mirrors. Black silk socks. Underwear with the creases still sharp which looked as if it had just been unfolded from tissue.
‘For God’s sake,’ Nick Penry murmured.
It was exactly five minutes to eight. Someone tapped discreetly at the door. He flung it open to confront Amy.
‘Um. I thought you might be ready,’ she said. Her cheeks went faintly pink. ‘I’ll come back later.’
Nick jabbed his finger at the clothes on the bed. ‘I won’t wear this get-up. Where have my clothes gone?’
‘I expect they’ve taken them away to dry them properly for you. What’s wrong with the ones they’ve given you?’
‘Everything. D’you really think I’d put all that lot on?’
Amy’s face went a deeper pink. She pushed past him into the room. ‘I don’t give a damn what you wear. Come down to dinner in my little brother’s dressing-gown, if that’s what you feel like.’
Nick suddenly wanted to laugh. Instead he leant against the door frame and folded his arms. ‘A shirt and jersey and an ordinary pair of trousers will do nicely, thank you.’ He watched her flinging open drawers and rummaging through cupboards, suddenly noticing how pretty she was without the disfiguring beret that she had worn all afternoon. She had thick, shiny hair that was an unusual dark red, and warm, clear skin that coloured easily. Her eyes were the bluey-green colour that often went with red hair. She was wearing a creamy-coloured dress of some soft material that was slightly too fussy for her, Nick thought, but she had exceptionally pretty calves and ankles that her high-heeled, pointy-toed shoes with ankle-straps displayed to perfection.
‘Very nice,’ Nick said smoothly. She was holding out a navy-blue jersey that Richard had put away because it was too big for him. There was a plain white shirt too.
‘Leave the shirt unbuttoned if it’s much too tight,’ she said sharply. ‘I shall have to go and
