to the local station in the Bentley and Amy caught the London train. From Euston she plunged into the grimy clatter of the Underground with her thoughts already fixed on the Royal Lambeth.
There was always work, Amy told herself.
For the next weeks, with the rest of her set, Amy worked an eighteen-hour day. The crucial first batch of examinations was looming ahead of them.
‘I’ll never make it,’ Moira groaned. ‘I might just as well head back to Mother Ireland now. Perhaps I could get myself a little job in the draper’s in Portair.’
‘Don’t be so spineless,’ Amy retorted. ‘And if you’re not going to do your own work, at least shut up and let me get on with mine.’
‘I don’t know what’s come over you, Lovell. You used to be such a normal person. Got to come top, have you?’
‘I just want to pass these exams,’ Amy told her with an attempt at patience. ‘I need something to go right, just now.’
Moira looked shrewdly at her. ‘How’s your sister?’
‘The same.’
Isabel didn’t want to leave Thorogood House. Adeline showed signs of winning her battle with Peter Jaspert for Isabel’s guardianship, but when she had mentioned Lausanne and Dr Ahrends, Isabel had said in her quiet, firm way, ‘I want to stay here.’ She had made a friend of one of the other patients, and they sat in the day room together and walked in the grounds under the dripping rhododendron trees.
Amy and Richard went to see her, and came away silenced by Isabel’s remoteness. They travelled back to London and had dinner together at Bruton Street, but they never mentioned the orangery. Yet Amy felt that Richard held her less firmly at arm’s length than before. As their concern for Isabel drew them closer Richard tried less hard to be witty and surprising and let her occasionally glimpse his inner, reflective self. Amy loved her brother very much. Resolutely she had convinced herself that it wasn’t abnormal for boys to have love affairs with other boys. The judgement made her feel sage and mature. It was a phase that Richard would surely grow out of, and then he would marry and have children like everyone else. More than like everyone else, because Richard’s children would be Lovells. And Tony Hardy wasn’t difficult to love. She knew that, painfully well, herself. If Tony was truly homosexual – well, he had his own life too. Even with her new maturity Amy couldn’t bring herself to speculate beyond that. After Christmas at Chance Tony didn’t write to her or telephone again, and she accepted it sadly as she had accepted her loneliness.
The weeks dragged and then accelerated past towards the examinations. Amy had worked to the point where she felt nauseated by the sight of her file of lecture notes and dreamed at night of burns that she had forgotten how to dress and boils that swelled under her fingers.
There was little time for anything, even visiting Helen. In the few, snatched times that they spent together Amy was distressed by Helen’s listlessness and by the cough that had taken hold of her yet again.
Once, not expected, she came plodding down the street through drifting snow that piled against the steps and capped the black area railings. The door to Helen’s basement room was ajar and she was pushing it open as she heard Helen shout, ‘Look at it. Get out, will you? Go away. Don’t come back. I hate you. All of it.’ Thoroughly alarmed, Amy went in. To her astonishment there were only Freda and Jim, white-faced, and Helen at the table with her head in her hands. On the rubbed, faded linoleum were the tracks of dirty, melting snow that the excited children had tramped in with them. Hand in hand they pushed past her and escaped into the harsh white light again. The door slammed dully.
Amy went behind the screen at the sink and brought out a bucket and a floorcloth. Carefully she dried and polished the floor, and when she had finished she went and put her arm around Helen.
‘I don’t hate them,’ Helen said, her voice muffled by her hair and hands. ‘They’re everything in the world, and I bloody yell at them every hour of the day. They’d be better off on the parish, anyway.’
Amy stroked her hair back, feeling how hot she was. ‘Hush. You’re tired. And ill, you know that. I think you should be in hospital again.’
‘No.’
‘Please, Helen.’
‘It’s winter, or haven’t you noticed? Who’s going to find the money to feed them and keep them warm while I lie in bed?’
‘I will,’ Amy said quietly.
‘No, thanks.’
Helen hadn’t even paused to think and the abruptness of her rejection stung Amy.
‘Why not? Don’t be so selfish. Why kill yourself out of pride?’
There was a long, quiet moment. Then Helen said, ‘You don’t know everything, do you? If pride was all you had, you’d know better than to say that. People like you make me laugh.’
Then Amy understood how close to the edge Helen had come. She bit back the sudden fear and said gently, ‘Don’t argue with me as well. Shall I put the kettle on?’
Helen shrugged with exhaustion. ‘There isn’t any milk.’
Amy went out to the dark, cramped and pungent-smelling shop at the corner and bought a basket of supplies. When she came back she made Helen a cup of tea sweetened with condensed milk, just as she liked it, and a piece of bread and butter that her friend didn’t even touch. Amy said nothing, but, remembering what Helen had done once before when she was there, put a hambone with some chopped carrots and onions in a pan and left it on the ring to simmer for soup. There would be something for Freda and Jim when they came in again, and perhaps the savoury smell would tempt Helen.
‘Where have they gone?’ Amy asked, and Helen smiled lopsidedly.
‘Mag’s, I should think. Oh, they won’t be huddled in a doorway somewhere, if that’s what you’re thinking. They can take care of themselves, if they have to. Don’t worry.’
‘It isn’t Jim and Freda I’m worrying about.’
‘Thanks.’ Helen didn’t even have the energy to smile.
When the time came Amy had to force herself to leave and make her way up the deserted street once more. It was snowing again, wet flakes driven cruelly by the wind. She would have to come much more often, every day if possible, and at least she could bring food. Helen had accepted the first basket, that was something.
If pride was all you had, you’d know better than to say that.
The words dinned in Amy’s head as she put on her starched uniform again.
The exams came, almost an anticlimax after the build-up that the students had given them. Amy wrote her papers, ruthlessly clearing her head of everything else before each one. She went through her practical tests under the granite stares of Blaine and the sister tutor, never confusing a pressure dressing with a burn dressing and bandaging crooked legs in perfect overlapping layers.
The results appeared with surprising speed. The sister pinned up a typewritten list on the faded green baize-covered board in the study hall ante-room. Dorothy Hewitt’s name headed it, to nobody’s surprise, but Amy’s was immediately beneath.
‘Well
