she didn’t like him at all.’
They had finished their meal, and the waiter had brought them coffee in thick white cups. Tony was stirring his, first one way and then the other, waiting to see if Amy wanted to talk about what was worrying her.
‘She said he was licking his lips, waiting to pounce. She made him sound like a predator.’
Tony put his spoon down with a tiny clink. ‘How much do you know about Peter Jaspert?’
Amy shrugged, puzzled. ‘I know who he is in the family sense. Vaguely what his political interests are, even more vaguely his business ones. Why?’
‘I know a little bit more than that. I hear things, here and there. You pointed out once that I’m too fond of gossip.’ Tony smiled sardonically. ‘Jaspert’s a clever man. He uses that pink bluffness as a mask. He’s a director of Massey & Dart who have made considerable investments and loans to Germany over the past few years, some of it raised in France. Now, the French don’t like their money being used to help Germany and they’ve called in the loans. There’s a financial collapse in Germany and the London bankers’ money is frozen there. To meet their obligations Jaspert and his friends have persuaded the Bank of England to let them draw on gold reserves, and those have run out now. So they’ve turned elsewhere, notably to the United States. But foreign governments won’t lend unless the house is tidy. The bankers and the big money men in the City are insisting that the Government sweep up and tidy away the balance of payments deficit to help them out.’
‘How?’ Amy asked, aware of her blithe ignorance.
‘You’ve read about the May report?’
Amy nodded, vaguely remembering, although the only reading she had done in the last week was textbooks of anatomy.
‘Five rich men who recommended that a national deficit of nearly a hundred million pounds be met in the simplest and most painless way. Not by increasing taxation, because that hurts rich men. No, by putting a stop to government waste. That’s prudent housekeeping, isn’t it? And the biggest waste of all, of course, is unemployment benefit. So they want to cut that by twenty per cent. A nice, round figure. What could be simpler?’
Amy could hear another voice, rising and falling with Tony’s. It was Nick Penry, up in the old schoolroom at Bruton Street, talking about Nantlas. There was no chapel singing on Sundays now, because there was no minister. There was none on Saturday nights in the Miners’ Rests any more, because no one could afford the beer that fuelled dry throats. There was no warmth, no medicine, and precious little food because the benefit didn’t stretch to it. And now they wanted to cut that by twenty per cent.
‘It’s cleverer than that, even,’ Tony went on. His thin, quizzical face was stiff. ‘The City men know that they can win MacDonald round because he can’t do anything else. He’ll carry half the Cabinet with him. They’ll get the benefit cut, even if not by twenty per cent. But the rest of the Labour Cabinet, the Party and Bevin and the TUC, they won’t support it. So there’ll be a split, and a collapse of the Government. My guess is that they’ll opt for a coalition for the duration of the “National Crisis”. It will be the end of MacDonald in real political terms, and at the next general election, when everyone is tired of the crisis, why, a Conservative victory. It’s neat for Jaspert, isn’t it? I’m sure he is licking his lips. It’s financial salvation and political expediency all in one package. I hear that he can expect to be a junior minister in the next government.’
‘You hate him, don’t you?’ Amy said quietly and Tony’s stiff mask dissolved. He put his hand over hers.
‘I hate what he stands for, and so would most of the people I call my friends.’
Jake, Amy thought. And Angel, and Kay. And Nick.
‘So long as there are men like Jaspert entrusted with the running of it, this country will always be as bitterly class-divided as it is now.’ Tony’s fingers tightened. ‘Do you believe that, Amy? Do you believe that there is a war between people like us, sitting here, and him?’
Amy followed his stare past the looped curtains at the plateglass restaurant window. Outside in the street a man was standing at the kerb. He was wearing a cloth cap and a torn coat, and he was playing a whistle. At his feet stood an empty tin cup. The passers-by streamed past him, on their way from Shaftesbury Avenue in search of dinner, and they never heard the whistling. Behind him in the street a taxi roared past, and then a low open tourer driven by a man in evening dress.
Amy looked away, back to Tony’s fingers covering her own. She thought of Helen lying in the Royal Lambeth, and then of Nick and his handicapped son. Her thoughts always came back to Nick.
‘I believe it,’ she said heavily. Tony’s thumb was stroking the side of her hand, very gently, to and fro. ‘I just don’t know how I’m supposed to fight in it.’
Tony didn’t answer that, nor did she expect him to. As they sat, preoccupied with their own thoughts, a little silence beat between them.
After a moment Tony sat upright again and lifted a finger to the waiter to refill their coffee cups.
‘Anyway, to answer your question properly, no, I don’t hate Jaspert himself. How could I? I don’t even know him. All I do know is that there are dozens of other men just like him, and quite a lot of them are happily married to girls like Isabel. His business and political lives may be one thing and his personal self quite another. He’s probably a model husband and father, and kind to animals and his old mother as well.’
‘Or he may be just as predatory at home as elsewhere.’
Tony looked sharply at her over the rim of his cup. ‘You shouldn’t assume that.’
‘Why not? I know that something is making my sister unhappy, and I think it’s him.’
‘Oh, Amy. You may be right. But when two people are married they are accountable to each other. It’s a contract between consenting adults. By definition. If I were you I’d leave them alone, unless Isabel comes to you.’
Tony was the one who was right, of course. Isabel was a Jaspert herself now. It was absurd to think that she was trapped by them.
Suddenly, Amy felt that she was on the verge of tears. She was worried, and tired from the incessant work. And the insistent, hopeless whistling from the street was filling her head. The cheerful restaurant bustle and clatter was grating.
‘Tony, do you mind if we go now? Perhaps we could walk a little way.’
‘Of course.’
He paid the bill and steered her out into the street. At the kerb Amy fumbled in her bag but Tony was quicker. He dropped a coin into the tin cup and then took her arm in his.
‘Let’s walk up to the square.’
It was a warm, still night and through the pall of soot and smoke came the scent of moist earth and leaves. Amy had never spent August in London before, and she realized as she sniffed the air how much she was missing the wide green spread of Chance.
As they came into Soho Square a burst of dance music and laughter drifted into the quiet, and was swallowed by the netted black leaves of the plane trees against the indigo sky. They walked slowly, arm in arm, with the lights of an occasional car picking them up and then letting them fall back into the dark. Through the trees and over the rooftops was
