bound copies of nursing journals, Amy thought that whatever was coming it couldn’t possibly be as complicated as the course she had steered to get even this far.
Amy had first of all confronted Adeline with her plan, on the morning of Nick Penry’s departure. She had found her mother sitting up in bed, her breakfast tray pushed to one side. With her uncoiled mass of dark red hair fanned over the shoulders of her dove-grey silk robe, Adeline looked about eighteen years old. The white bedcovers were strewn with her morning post, engraved invitations and scrawled notes and long, intimate letters from abroad. The morning papers were still folded neatly as her maid had laid them out. Amy kissed her.
‘Darling, you look very pretty. What are you doing today? Shall we have lunch together? I’m going to the Carlisles’ this afternoon, but we could have a tiny lunch, couldn’t we? Or are you booked?’
Amy had picked up the newspapers and was staring at the headlines.
ANTI-COMMUNIST DEMONSTRATORS AND HUNGER MARCHERS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE BATTLE
HEAVY POLICE PRESENCE CONTROLS OUTBREAKS OF VIOLENCE 17 INJURED, 27 ARRESTS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE
There was a picture of the dense swaying crowd and the police horses massed in front of the platform that brought the taste of packed bodies and fear back into Amy’s throat. Nick’s head was somewhere in that dark throng, and her own, and Jake Silverman’s with the frightening sticky patch on his skull. Could she telephone the hospital this morning to ask how he was?
‘Amy? Darling? Share the fascination.’
Suppressing a guilty start Amy waved vaguely at the headline.
‘Mmm. The traffic was a nightmare all afternoon. Where did you and Violet go? You would think that people could rally somewhere a bit further off without disrupting all of London.’
Heaven forbid, Amy thought with a moment of savagery, that the hunger march should make any of us late for the hairdresser. The thought made her come out with what she wanted to say more coldly and abruptly than she had intended.
‘I want to talk to you about something important. I’ve been feeling for months that I don’t do anything. Anything worthwhile,’ she added firmly, seeing Adeline’s surprise. ‘I want to take up nursing. A proper nurse’s training at one of the London hospitals, not voluntary work.’
Adeline’s reaction had been to laugh, and then to be sympathetic when she saw that Amy was serious. It was a whim, of course. Perhaps a boy had disappointed her and this was her way of working off her troubles.
Adeline said consolingly, ‘Well, darling, I do know that sometimes one needs a change. London can get very stale. Perhaps we should have a holiday? We could go – oh, to Venice. Or Egypt, what about that? Bobbie would come, I’m sure, and we could ask the Carlisles, or Mickie Dunn. Wouldn’t it be fun?’
Amy sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering how to explain to her lovely worldly mother that she didn’t want a life like hers. Adeline had had her own unhappiness, Amy knew that, and she knew equally well that her antidote to it had been party after party, dancing and dining and travelling and dangerous, discreet liaisons. Amy loved her mother dearly but she was filled with a sudden, puritanical aversion to her world.
‘It would be lovely to have a holiday with you, Mama, but if everyone else came along too it would be exactly like here, or Chance, and we might just as well stay at home.’
Mickie Dunn was a witty, middle-aged dandy with a sharp tongue who was one of the stalwarts of Adeline’s circle and the Carlisles were young, rich and fast. All the signs were that Bobbie was Adeline’s newest interest. It wasn’t a party that Amy could even pretend to relish.
‘My love, how could we go on our own? What would we do?’ Adeline was genuinely surprised and Amy smiled at her.
‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be all that much fun. Anyway, it isn’t a holiday I need, it’s just the opposite. I want to work, Mama. I want to be of some use in the world. No, don’t …’ Amy reached out to hold her mother’s hand, preventing her from impatiently waving the idea away. ‘Please hear me out. I’m fit and strong, and I’m not stupid. I’m bored, that’s what’s the matter with me, and ever since we were little you’ve told us that boredom is a sin. If there was a war on, I’d be doing something useful.’
‘That’s hardly the same thing,’ Adeline said faintly.
‘Why should it be different, if we’re just talking about me? It’s not a whim, I promise. I’ve been thinking about what I should do ever since the wedding, although I’ve only just realized exactly what.’ Amy took a breath now and faced her mother squarely. ‘I want to train to be a nurse. There are always sick people everywhere. I can do something helpful. Something useful, not just go to parties and wait to get married. I’d be a good nurse, you know. I’m not afraid of work.’ Amy let Adeline’s hand go, ready to defend her decision. ‘And I like people. All kinds of people.’
Adeline sighed. ‘I don’t think you’re afraid of anything,’ she said. Looking at the set of her daughter’s chin Adeline thought how mulish Amy could be when her mind was made up. All through their childhood it was Isabel who had been the pliant one. But then, perhaps Amy would do best in the end. She had a little core of self-will that gave her a sparkle lacking in Isabel.
Adeline marshalled herself to dissuade Amy from this latest idea, but she suspected that the battle was already lost.
‘Darling, it would be such a terrible waste. You’re young and pretty, and you don’t have a thing to worry about. I want you to enjoy yourself, Amy. Do you have any idea how hard nursing would be for you? It would be all wounds, and bedpans, and people dying every day. All the horrible, ugly things that you needn’t even think about now.’
‘I don’t know yet how hard it would be,’ Amy said, thinking of Jake Silverman and the dark, sticky softness at the back of his skull, and her own fear. ‘I’ll find out, if you will let me.’
Seeing her face, Adeline shrugged and swept the litter of her correspondence into a haphazard pile. If the child was set on it, perhaps it wouldn’t do her any harm to spend a few weeks coming to appreciate her own good fortune.
‘Amy, I can’t pretend that I’m delighted by the idea. But I won’t forbid it absolutely. You must also talk to your father about it.’
Amy’s delighted hug enveloped her. ‘Thank you, darling. You’ll see in the end that it’s the right thing, I promise you.’ And now, Amy decided as her mother’s hair brushed her cheek and she smelt her expensive gardenia scent, she had better give her version of last night before Adeline heard about it from one of the staff.
‘I wished yesterday that I wasn’t so helpless,’ she said quickly. ‘I was in Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon. A man was hurt beside me and I helped to get him to hospital.’ As lightly as she could, she told the rest of the story.
‘A coal miner?’ Adeline repeated, as if Amy had said aborigine.
‘Here?’
‘He was tired and hungry, and he had nowhere else to go.’
‘Did Glass see to him?’
‘Well, no. As a matter of fact we had dinner together, and then he slept in Richard’s room. He went off first thing this morning.’
Adeline
