old times?’ Adeline proposed, lifting her glass to him, and he echoed politely, ‘Old times.’ But Amy, as she watched him, knew that Jack Roper wasn’t a man who would care much for the past. The future might challenge him, but it was the present he lived for. She felt the little shiver again.
Adeline and her guest were talking about the years of their friendship. They had met almost twenty-five years ago, in London during the glittering Season before Adeline had married Gerald Lovell.
‘Your mother was like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree, then,’ Jack Roper said.
‘And still is,’ Richard murmured. He was reluctantly impressed by the stranger, and so unusually quiet.
Jack Roper bowed. His pale grey suit was perfectly cut, smooth as a second skin across his broad shoulders. ‘Of course. But in those days, every man who saw her fell in love with her. Including me, of course. I was crouching underneath the tree, hoping to catch a sequin falling off her skirt.’
Adeline was laughing. ‘You were too busy making money and making yourself known,’ she corrected him. He made his ironic bow again, smiling.
‘We were two Pittsburghers, both of us with our way to make in the world. By the time I had paved mine a little, you were Lady Lovell.’
‘Yes,’ Adeline said softly. From the brief glance that passed between them Amy guessed that, at some inevitable time during the years between, her mother and Jack Roper had been lovers.
‘Good to be back in London,’ he said after a pause. ‘I always feel at home here.’
‘And where’s home when you aren’t feeling at home in London?’ It was unlike Richard to sound waspish. Amy wondered a little at the complex currents eddying around her.
‘All over. New York mostly, for the last few years. Trying to put my business back on its feet after 1929.’
Somehow Jack Roper didn’t have the look of an unsuccessful man.
‘What is your business?’ Richard asked.
‘Construction. What’s yours?’ The blunt deflection made Richard laugh in spite of himself. He spread his arms out along the marble mantelpiece.
‘Eton, for far too long. I’m not going back for the next half, though. I’ve decided to launch myself as a man of letters. It sounds agreeable as well as impressive, don’t you think?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
They were all laughing when the maid came in again and whispered to Adeline. Adeline stood up and said gracefully, ‘Shall we go through?’
It was an agreeable lunch, to begin with. There was lightly poached salmon with a purée of sorrel and champagne sauce, and then wild strawberries in a silver dish. Amy ate with a small sigh of contentment that earned her another of Jack Roper’s blue glances, followed by a quizzical smile. She was sitting beside him and had to turn slightly to see his profile. His beaked nose gave him a forbidding air, until he too turned and looked at her again. Amy felt suddenly that her curled fingers were damp around the stem of her glass.
They had all been talking, Adeline leading them in her pretty drawl, her face alight with vivacity and her eyes brighter than usual. But when she saw the look, and Amy as lovely as a flower with the diamonds cuffing her wrists, the mask slipped and sagged.
She held out her glass to be refilled and then, when the servants had gone again, she motioned to Richard to do it once more.
One by one the three of them saw it and felt it, looking back at Adeline across her perfect table. In the course of a single meal Adeline had grown haggard.
The talk limped on. Amy and Richard had to lean heavily, for the moment, on Jack Roper’s urbanity. He had an admirable fund of London gossip and he gently pushed the tastiest titbits across the table, trying to tempt Adeline back into the circle. He had dined the night before with the Channons.
‘And do you know what Honor told me about Sylvia Ashley?’
Richard glanced sideways at his mother, and then his hand slid to cover hers on the polished table top.
At length, Adeline collected herself. There were sudden deep lines at the side of her mouth, showing under the peachy-pale make-up that had once hidden everything.
‘I think we’ve all had enough of this luncheon, darlings. Shall we go and have a little cup of coffee?’
Her voice was slurred, a drawl within a drawl. They walked slowly back to the white drawing room, with Richard and Jack supportively on either side of her as if she was an old woman.
Amy came behind them, caught short in miserable confusion.
Adeline sat in the corner of one of the sofas. She smoothed the black and fuchsia folds of her dress around her and then she lifted her hand to shade her eyes a little.
‘Sit here, beside me,’ she commanded and Jack Roper sat down. He went on talking smoothly about New York and London, and about old friends, as Richard poured coffee into little gilt-rimmed cups. Adeline drank two cups and then, seemingly as quickly as she had let the mask slip, she was herself again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured to Jack Roper. In answer he took her hand and smiled at her, and the lines in Adeline’s face were invisible again. Watching the two of them, Amy understood that Adeline would always command devotion from the men who had loved her. Even from Gerald. Perhaps especially from Gerald, and that was part of his sadness.
Surprisingly, the lunch party ended as cheerfully as it had begun.
Richard went over to the liqueurs tray and raised his eyebrows at them. ‘I’m going to have some of this green chartreuse, for no better reason than that it matches my tie. Mama? There isn’t anything pink, I’m sorry to say. Amy? Mr Roper?’
Adeline fluttered her fingers. ‘Not a single drop more for me. It makes me feel so lugubrious today.’
Jack Roper had a brandy, and smoked a cigar. Amy leaned back against the cushions and sniffed appreciatively at the mingled scents of flowers, cigar smoke and Chanel.
‘I’m so pleased to be home,’ she said, and Adeline looked round meditatively at her.
‘I wish you were here more often. It wouldn’t come as such a shock, then, to see that you have grown up.’
At length, Jack Roper stood up to say goodbye. He kissed Adeline, turning her face so that his lips met the corner of her mouth. She bent her head, and touched one finger against the grey lapel of his suit.
‘Amy, perhaps you would see Mr Roper downstairs for me?’
Amy wasn’t sure that she wanted to be left alone with Jack Roper, but she nodded obediently as the men shook hands and then she walked with Jack beside her, under the well of light that splashed the line of Lovell portraits and to the head of the stairs. He was much taller than she was, and the bulk of him was a little intimidating.
As they paused before the long sweep downwards, he asked, ‘What do you do, Amy? Are you a nurse?’
His quickness unsettled her.
‘Yes.
