round, for miles and miles in every direction, full of separate lives that would never touch on hers, full of people settling down for the short summer night. It wasn’t all men whistling hungrily in a gutter, any more than it was all dances in Berkeley Square. Amy smiled at the thought that her own particular London, Society London, was scattered abroad and to the depths of the country, and yet the city hummed on unnoticing. In the stillness Amy felt her anxiety dropping away. Instead she felt a kind of languid fatalism. She could do nothing more than she was doing now, and it was pointless to try to drive herself beyond it. And if going on just as she was meant walking on beside Tony Hardy, then she was happy with that too. They were almost the same height and they moved perfectly in step, hip to hip. Tony’s arm and hand felt warm against hers, and she saw the quick turn of his profile as he looked away across her at the mottled columns of the trees.
‘Tony?’ she heard herself asking, ‘why aren’t you married?’
Without letting the smoothness of their steps falter, he said, ‘Because I don’t, personally, believe in it.’
‘Why?’ she asked, and then he did stop and turn to stand squarely in front of her. In the shadow of the trees it was almost completely dark. Out of the corner of her eye Amy caught the movement of a blacker shadow still, and then saw it was a cat prowling across the fenced-in grass.
‘I couldn’t make it work,’ Tony whispered. Then with the tip of his finger he turned her face so that she had to stop watching the cat, and counting the beats of her own heart, and look full at him instead. His eyes were almond-shaped, she noticed, and there was an expression in them she had never seen before. He moved again, and his face was so close to hers that she felt, rather than heard, him say, ‘Although there are times when I could almost believe it might work.’ The tip of his finger traced the curve of her cheek and then the corner of his mouth touched hers.
Amy closed her eyes. They were standing very close. Very slowly Tony put his arms around her and she felt him touching her, as if he was gauging the weight of her against him. His mouth moved over hers, exploring, stiff at first and then softening.
At last, she thought, and there was a moment of relief as Soho Square stood utterly silent and dark, and Tony kissed her as she had longed for him to do. His hand slid from the small of her back up the length of her spine, then to the bare nape of her neck, and his fingers touched the thick waves of her hair, pinned up with tortoiseshell combs. He touched one of the combs experimentally and then pulled it out. The waves of hair fell loose at one side. Amy laughed and shook it back over her shoulder but Tony was still touching it, lifting the thickness of it almost unbelievingly.
‘Amy,’ he said in an odd voice. ‘Why are we doing this? We were good enough friends already, weren’t we?’
The shock was like a splash of icy-cold water.
Because I love you. Don’t you love me?
She almost said it, and then heard the bewildered plaintiveness that the words would have held, like a little girl denied a promised treat. The soothing darkness had turned hot and threatening, and full of invisible pitfalls.
Tony was tucking her hair back into place, and pulling her wrap around her bare shoulders again.
He didn’t love her, she understood that. He wasn’t going to love her either, however long she waited and watched the beguiling curl of his mouth. Humiliation and a fierce longing to be by herself almost choked her.
‘Of course we’re good friends.’ She forced the lightness into her voice, hearing the words coming through her clenched teeth. She kept them bitten shut to stop the other things from spilling out, so that at least he would never know how she was feeling now.
‘Shall we walk up and look for a taxi?’ Amy said pleasantly. ‘I should get back home. I have to be on duty by noon tomorrow.’
Tony took her arm again and they strolled on under the spreading branches as if nothing had happened at all.
*
Amy was glad to be going back to the Lambeth. Neither Gerald nor Adeline was at Bruton Street, Richard was staying with Eton friends and the big house felt empty and hollow. With Isabel immured at West Talbot, and after last night, there was nothing to be at home for. Amy decided as she put her things back into her bag that the bleak hostel would be friendly and welcoming by comparison.
At the bus stop she bought a newspaper. She scanned the tall, black banner headlines and saw that Tony’s prediction had been correct. The Labour Government under Ramsay MacDonald had divided and collapsed over the question of reducing unemployment benefits. A coalition National Government was being formed under the Prime Minister’s leadership, with a Cabinet composed of four Labour members, four Conservative and two Liberal.
From the paragraphs of close type under the heading Amy learned that one of the new Conservative Cabinet ministers was Peter’s friend Archer Cole.
‘Dear God,’ Helen Pearce greeted her on her return to the ward. ‘You look about as cheerful as a wet Monday morning at the hock-shop. Didn’t you enjoy your leave? Had a fall-out with Tony, did you?’
‘Not really.’ Amy smiled at her in spite of herself. ‘Everything with Tony is just the same as it always is. You look a hundred times better than you did.’
It was true. Helen’s face was rounder, there was a glow of natural colour in it instead of the unnatural flush of fever, and she was sitting confidently up in bed with none of the old, strained immobility.
‘I feel it,’ she said proudly. ‘The doctor says I can go home for when Freda and Jim get back from Bournemouth.’
‘I’m glad. But I’ll miss you on the ward.’
Helen looked away and said casually ‘Well, p’raps you’ll come and see us at our place? It’s only round the corner, you know. And the little ones would like it.’
Amy beamed at her, delighted. ‘Of course I will. I’ll come and make absolutely sure that you’re taking care of yourself. And we’ll be able to talk without Sister watching to make sure we don’t get too friendly.’
‘Nurse Lovell.’ It was Sister Blaine, like a starched battleship.
‘See what I mean?’ Amy mouthed over her shoulder as she scurried away to do what she was told.
In the week after her evening with Tony, Amy discovered that the easiest way to cope was to absorb herself in hospital life. She fixed her attention firmly on the wards and on her classes, and even earned a word of commendation from Sister Tutor.
Isabel remained at West Talbot, and in her few free hours Amy went once to the cinema with Moira to see a new Laurel and Hardy film, and spent the rest of the time in the hostel. It was easier, in the enclosed atmosphere where the hospital was the sole topic of conversation, not to allow herself to worry about Isabel or to relive the humiliation of Tony turning away from her. If they really had been such good friends, she reasoned with herself, then Tony didn’t want them to be more than that because he didn’t find her attractive enough. She knew it was her vanity that was suffering, but that didn’t make the hurt any less.
There was something more, too. She hadn’t seen Tony particularly often, but she had always looked eagerly forward to their few times together. Now that there was no daily anticipation of seeing him, and imagining what might happen, there was a small, black void in the centre of her life. Amy began to fill the void with work, and with her deepening
