Amy recited to herself with blind irrelevance as all her bones, with all the names she had learned for them in another world, melted within her.
‘You are very beautiful,’ Jack said softly. ‘I was right about the diamonds. And now, do you think we should go on to Ondine’s? Would you like that?’
‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve never been.’ But she had heard of it, and she was impressed, even though from what she already knew of Jack Roper it was inevitable that he would be a member. Ondine’s was the nightclub for the innermost of London’s circles, not just for the titled and the very rich, although many of its members were both. The clever and the famous, in almost any field, so long as they were fashionable, might also be invited to join. Ondine’s had the reputation of being both smart and raffish, lavish and louche at the same time as rigidly exclusive. And she knew too that the very grandest nightclub patron of all made regular appearances at Ondine’s.
Jack drove the Lagonda to Mayfair at breakneck speed.
‘Why so fast?’ Amy gasped, and he turned to grin at her, shouting over the engine’s roar.
‘Bad habits die hard. In my day I was an amateur racing driver. Not any more, sadly. Reactions too slow, now.’ The street lights streaked overhead and then they swerved and the big headlamps cut through the dimness of a deserted side street. ‘Didn’t you know? Hasn’t Adeline told you anything about me?’
A touch of vanity, there, Amy thought. ‘I’d never heard of you until the day before yesterday.’
‘I don’t know whether or not to be flattered by that.’
She was profoundly relieved when the Lagonda drew up at the bland façade that fronted Ondine’s. The little street was solidly lined with cars. Jack took her arm and led her in through the anonymous front door.
The dance floor and the packed tables that surrounded it were in the basement, and must have extended through the cellars of several houses on either side. As they came down the steps into the club, the talk, the music and the décor assailed Amy simultaneously. The room was solid with people and the décor was Egyptian as Egypt had never been. The doorways and panels around the walls were obelisk-shaped, and the negro band, in glittering priests’ robes, was playing on a dais surrounded by silver pyramids. On the wall opposite Amy was a huge, blindly staring reproduction of the mask of Tutankhamun.
‘It aims to be exotic but is in fact perfectly cosy,’ Jack murmured beside her.
The club’s owner saw Jack as soon as he reached the bottom step, and undulated forward to greet him. Ondine was wearing a sheath of glittering green, and her eyes were made up to echo the stare of Tutankhamun over her head. Even though her dress was only just held up over her breasts by a huge scarab pin, Ondine was rumoured to be a man.
Jack kissed her on both cheeks.
‘Zhack Ropaire, chéri. You are at ze table tonight?’
‘Madame Ondine. Yes, if you please.’
Ondine guided them to the booths against the wall away from the band, where round tables and red velvet chairs were separated by more pyramids. Jack held out one of four empty chairs in the most secluded of the booths, and Amy sat down. A moment or two later champagne in an ice-bucket materialized beside them. Jack’s head bent and almost touched hers as he gossiped amiably about the dancers revolving in front of them. Amy knew one or two of the faces from her mother’s drawing room, others from the newspapers, but most of them were strangers. As she watched she had the feeling that this was a stratum of society that would be as interesting as the debutante dances of Berkeley Square had been dull.
Amy was excited, alive with every fibre of herself, and more wide awake than she had felt for months.
‘Couldn’t we dance?’ she asked Jack. It would be an added pleasure to feel his arm around her, and the weight of his hand in the small of her back.
‘Would you mind if we go on sitting here for a moment?’ he answered. Jack was glancing at his watch with the first hint of anxiety she had glimpsed in him. He was waiting for something.
‘Of course not,’ Amy murmured. She drank her champagne, and watched the kaleidoscope turning in front of her.
A moment or two later Amy felt rather than heard the ripple that washed through the room. It was like a little wave that gathered its own momentum into a crest before breaking away into whispers of foam around the room. And when she did look to see where it had come from, it was the woman of the couple approaching their table that she noticed first. She was tall and stately, with dark hair drawn back in smooth waves from the centre. She had full, reddened lips and dark eyes, and she was wearing a perfectly simple dress of gleaming topaz satin. It was Thelma, Lady Furness, one of the celebrated Morgan twins. The man at her shoulder was the Prince of Wales.
Jack Roper stood up and bowed and Amy stumbled to her feet beside him.
‘Good evening, Sir. Thelma, how lovely you always are.’ Jack took Amy’s hand. His was firm and dry and perfectly cool, unlike her own.
‘Sir, may I introduce Amy Lovell?’
Memories of Miss Abbott’s school came flooding mercifully back to her. Not a formal Court curtsey on a private occasion. One foot gracefully behind the other, and dip into a small, controlled bob.
‘Good evening, Sir.’
‘Adeline’s daughter?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
They were sitting in their red velvet seats again around the intimate little table. Just wait, Amy thought irreverently, until I tell Moira O’Hara. And then she thought how much Helen Pearce would have enjoyed the reflected glory. She had sustained an odd, admiring awe of the Royal Family, and the Prince especially.
He drank whisky, and smoked incessantly, cocking an eyebrow through the wreaths of smoke. As soon as he had stubbed one out he lit another, tapping a staccato rhythm with the butt on his cigarette case. Amy found herself leaning forward, straining her ears. His light, clipped voice was difficult to hear and the Prince kept turning sideways to Lady Furness for confirmation of what he was saying. Only Jack seemed perfectly at ease now that the moment of waiting for the royal arrival was safely past.
After a few minutes’ conversation, the Prince turned to Amy. ‘Miss Lovell, would you like to dance?’
‘Thank you, Sir.’ They were on the dance floor, and Amy was conscious of the covert stares of every woman in the room. How odd it is, she thought. Her partner was just a small-framed, dandyish man with a sad, almost monkey-like face. He was exactly like everyone else, and yet could never be because people were never quite themselves with him. Amy felt that her own face was stiff, and a ripple of sympathy disconcerted her.
The Prince said very little, and then only pleasant trivialities, but he danced like a professional. Amy frowned, concentrating on keeping up with him. At last, her partner said, ‘Shall we rejoin our host?’ and she felt quite giddy with relief. The band finished the number with a triumphant flourish, and she was restored to Jack. He grinned at her over the rim of his glass. The Prince was leaning forward attentively to Lady Furness, his duty clearly done.
‘Would you like to dance again?’ Jack asked.
‘Yes, please.’
It was quite different. No one
