Isabel looked down at her rings. ‘I have something to tell you. I went to see Mr Hardwicke this morning, and he says that I am two months pregnant.’
The clatter startled her and she looked up. Peter had put down his cup and stumbled forward from his low chair. Now he was half-kneeling, half-crouching in front of her. She saw that the polished black toe of his shoe had rucked up one corner of the pale rug.
‘Oh, darling. A baby?’ His big hands hovered and then came down over hers in her lap. Isabel looked at him and saw that his face was suffused with simple pleasure, all the self-sure imperviousness gone for the moment. She hadn’t expected that he would be so pleased.
‘In November, he says.’
Peter’s hands tightened over her fingers. ‘And is everything all right?’ After the shock of pleasure had come anxiety. Not for her directly, Isabel saw, but for the baby. It was his baby that would be important. Isabel had guessed that was how it would be, but she had underestimated how much it would mean to him. Now she revised the full value of what she possessed. She lifted her chin and stared straight into Peter’s eyes.
‘Mr Hardwicke says that I must be very careful.’
The anxiety in him intensified at once. ‘Careful? What’s wrong? If there’s anything, we’ll get the top man …’
‘Nothing’s wrong, Peter,’ she said smoothly. ‘He just talked about rest.’
‘Rest? Of course you can rest. You don’t do anything …’
‘And he forbade any kind of physical stress. Anything like that, until after the baby is born.’
Peter met her stare now, and his hands were heavy on hers. He was no fool, Isabel knew that. He understood at once what she was saying. She was offering his heir, whether or not the doctor’s warning was genuine, in exchange for her physical inviolacy.
For a long moment they went on looking at each other. It occurred to Isabel that they were locked in position like a tableau of a Victorian proposal, and her irrational desire to laugh was vaguely disturbing.
At last Peter stood up. ‘If there’s anything not quite normal, I think we should see a specialist. Hardwicke’s no more than a GP.’
‘I don’t think there’s any need for that,’ Isabel said firmly. ‘Mr Hardwicke has looked after us since we were babies, and I trust him absolutely.’
‘I see,’ Peter said, and she knew that he did. He turned away abruptly and Isabel felt confidence waking up and beginning to grow inside her again like the baby itself. Her hand rested protectively over her stomach. ‘We shall have to abide by Mr Hardwicke’s strictures, of course. Somehow or other,’ he added threateningly. Isabel suspected that he would go looking for physical gratification elsewhere, if he wasn’t doing it already, and in the relief of her first victory she couldn’t have cared less. The longing to laugh grew even stronger.
Then, with his characteristic ability to put what he didn’t choose to consider further right out of his mind, Peter was swinging around the room smiling again. ‘It will be a boy, of course. God, but the old man will be pleased. Have you told anyone?’
‘Of course not, darling. The father should know first.’
‘The father. Quite right. I’m going to telephone.’ As he passed her, he stroked her shoulder awkwardly. He looked, Isabel decided, just as he must have done when he was picked for his school eleven. He was halfway through the door before he said, almost pleadingly, ‘Well, we must have been doing something right, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Something,’ Isabel echoed expressionlessly.
‘We’ll make it work, after the baby comes. Just wait and see,’ he promised her.
Alone once more in her drawing room, with her hand still shielding her stomach, Isabel stared at the enamel clock on the mantelpiece.
At first sight, Amy didn’t recognize her. She was sitting waiting for her sister at a corner table in the Ritz dining-room. The lunchtime ritual was at its height, and the big room was alive with the muted buzz of greetings and conversation. Isabel was late, and Amy had begun to watch the doors as the maître d’hôtel swept forward to greet each new arrival. Even so, as the woman in the pale tweed Vionnet suit was ushered towards her table Amy glanced once and then away again. She looked like any one of a dozen other women lunching today, but she didn’t look like Isabel.
But then she stopped beside the empty chair and the waiter drew it back for her. Amy started in surprise and then collected herself.
‘Bel, darling, I’m sorry. I must have been miles away.’
‘I’m sorry too, for being so late,’ Isabel said. She smiled, but her face was tired. ‘I don’t know exactly what takes up so much time nowadays, but I’m always late. And I used to be so well organized. Forgive?’
‘Of course.’
It wasn’t just the new, intimidatingly elegant clothes. Isabel had always enjoyed shopping and fittings, whereas Amy hated them, and as Peter Jaspert’s wife Isabel could certainly afford to dress at the top couturiers. The cut of Isabel’s tight-waisted suit was perfect to a hairsbreadth, and the soft blue-grey tweed fitted her like a second skin. The silvery grey of her blouse with its extravagant bow-tied neck exactly matched the cloud of grey fox-fur around her shoulders, and there was a little hat in the same shade, tipped forward with a wisp of veiling.
‘Isabel, your hair.’
Amy was too surprised to hide the dismay in her voice. Isabel’s rich mass of dark red waves, her best feature just as it was Adeline’s, had been brutally cut back. Under the pert little hat was a hairstyle exactly like every other woman’s in the room — stiff-looking ridges drawn back to a flat little chignon at the nape of the neck. At a single stroke, Isabel had reduced herself to chic ordinariness.
Isabel was leaning wearily back in her chair and looking around her. ‘I know. What do you think? I thought it would make a difference. I forget now what kind of difference, but it doesn’t seem to have done in any case.’
It wasn’t just the hair, Amy thought. Isabel looked exhausted, as if all her old liveliness had been drained away. Her face was thinner, with a new, shuttered look to it.
Anxiety gripped at Amy. Whatever’s wrong? she was going to blurt out, and then from the corner of her eye she saw the black height of the head waiter, hovering. Isabel had picked up her menu but she was twisting it in her hands, unopened.
‘What shall we eat? I’m famished,’ Amy said, with an attempt at cheerfulness.
Isabel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not very hungry.’ Then suddenly she smiled, a thin approximation of her old smile. ‘D’you know what I’d really like? A glass of milk, and an apple. One of the russets, from Chance.’
‘I don’t suppose that would tax the Ritz kitchens too severely,’ Amy said. She was about to summon the waiter, but Isabel’s smile had already faded. ‘I’ll just have a plain omelette,’ she said tonelessly.
When they had ordered and they were alone again in the discreet bustle of the dining room, Amy put her hand out to cover Isabel’s. The big square diamond her sister wore sat cold and hard under her palm.
‘Isabel, what’s wrong?’
A trolley with a huge silver dome perched on it was wheeled past, followed by a phalanx of waiters with silver dishes balanced at shoulder height. Isabel turned her head away from the smell of the food.
‘Please, Isabel? Won’t you tell me? I know there’s something.’ Isabel forced herself to focus on the starched white tablecloth, her sister’s hand warm over her own at the middle of it.
‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m going to have a baby.’
Relief flooded through Amy. So that was it. It explained everything, the tiredness and the