was perfectly natural and a good thing, Amy thought, that Peter should have taken Isabel away from the lifeless heat of London in August. It would be quiet at the Jasperts’ family home in Wiltshire, and Isabel would be able to rest. Peter would be with her too, instead of pursuing his complicated business and political affairs and leaving her alone at Ebury Street. But when she had tried to telephone her sister at West Talbot, Amy’s uneasiness stirred again. Although she told the butler quite clearly that she wished to speak to Mrs Jaspert, after a long wait it was Peter who came to the telephone.
‘How is she?’ Amy asked, anxiety sharpening her voice.
‘Perfectly well,’ Peter said smoothly. ‘Tired, of course, but quite in order physically.’
‘I wanted to speak to her, particularly.’
‘I rather think that she’s asleep. Shall I give her a message for you? Or you could speak to Mama, perhaps?’
Amy had the sudden sense that Isabel had been captured by Jasperts. ‘I’d like to speak to Isabel,’ she said distinctly. ‘When will she be awake, do you think?’
At last, after two more calls, Amy was successful. Isabel’s voice sounded thin and distant, as if she was only half-attending to Amy’s questions.
‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m supposed to be resting.’
‘Did Mr Hardwicke say so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is Bethan with you?’
‘Yes.’
At least that was something. Bethan would take care of her, however cut off they were by Jasperts.
‘Can I talk to her?’ Bethan could also be relied upon to tell the plain truth about Isabel. The response Amy heard might have been a laugh, but it wasn’t like Isabel’s old laughter.
‘Of course not. Do you remember when the King and Queen came to Chance?’
Amy remembered. There had been a retinue of thirty-seven attendants, and a rigid formality had descended on the house that made the sisters wonder how anyone managed to breathe at Court, let alone to live.
‘Well, it’s like that here. Except that there’s only family in the house. One spends one’s whole life changing.’
And so Bethan would be firmly placed below stairs, and definitely not available for talk on the telephone.
Isabel had stayed at West Talbot before her marriage, and she and Amy had laughed gently at the pomposities of Lady Jaspert’s household. But now the whole pitch of Isabel’s voice had changed. Amy was frightened for her.
‘Bel? I wish I could come down and be with you. But I can’t. If I hadn’t enrolled until after the baby …’
Isabel cut her short. ‘There’s nothing you could do. I’m well looked after. In any case we may be back in town soon. I don’t know what’s going on, Peter doesn’t tell me much, but he spends half his day on the telephone here and the rest sitting over papers in the library. It’s some crisis. Something to do with lending money to Germany, and the run on the pound. Do you understand that? Peter says the Government may collapse.’ Amy had been thinking how vague and remote her sister sounded, but now Isabel added with sudden vehemence, ‘It looks as if he’s waiting to pounce. You can almost see him licking his lips.’
Amy frowned into the black bakelite mouthpiece, trying to conjure up Isabel’s face. She sounded, suddenly, as if she hated Peter.
‘Will you come back with him?’
‘I suppose so. Nothing could be worse than staying here alone.’
‘Come back. Then I can see you and make sure that you’re all right. West Talbot is too far away. Isabel?’
‘Yes?’ The thin, listless voice was back again.
‘If there was anything, anything wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’
‘There’s nothing wrong.’
At a loss for anything more to say, Amy had hung up after repeating her warnings that Isabel was to rest, to take care of herself and not to worry. When her sister was back in London, perhaps she would be able to probe deeper. But if it was Peter who was the trouble, and she was increasingly afraid that it was indeed Peter, then what could she possibly do?
Amy looked back at Tony across the restaurant table. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘I think well enough, as far as the baby goes. But she sounds unhappy. She … said something to me on the telephone, something about Peter. She sounded as if she didn’t like him at all.’
They had finished their meal, and the waiter had brought them coffee in thick white cups. Tony was stirring his, first one way and then the other, waiting to see if Amy wanted to talk about what was worrying her.
‘She said he was licking his lips, waiting to pounce. She made him sound like a predator.’
Tony put his spoon down with a tiny clink. ‘How much do you know about Peter Jaspert?’
Amy shrugged, puzzled. ‘I know who he is in the family sense. Vaguely what his political interests are, even more vaguely his business ones. Why?’
‘I know a little bit more than that. I hear things, here and there. You pointed out once that I’m too fond of gossip.’ Tony smiled sardonically. ‘Jaspert’s a clever man. He uses that pink bluffness as a mask. He’s a director of Massey & Dart who have made considerable investments and loans to Germany over the past few years, some of it raised in France. Now, the French don’t like their money being used to help Germany and they’ve called in the loans. There’s a financial collapse in Germany and the London bankers’ money is frozen there. To meet their obligations Jaspert and his friends have persuaded the Bank of England to let them draw on gold reserves, and those have run out now. So they’ve turned elsewhere, notably to the United States. But foreign governments won’t lend unless the house is tidy. The bankers and the big money men in the City are insisting that the Government sweep up and tidy away the balance of payments deficit to help them out.’
‘How?’ Amy asked, aware of her blithe ignorance.
‘You’ve read about the May report?’
Amy nodded, vaguely remembering, although the only reading she had done in the last week was textbooks of anatomy.
‘Five rich men who recommended that a national deficit of nearly a hundred million pounds be met in the simplest and most painless way. Not by increasing taxation, because that hurts rich men. No, by putting a stop to government waste. That’s prudent housekeeping, isn’t it? And the biggest waste of all, of course, is unemployment benefit. So they want to cut that by twenty per cent. A nice, round figure. What could be simpler?’
Amy could hear another voice, rising and falling with Tony’s. It was Nick Penry, up in the old schoolroom at Bruton Street, talking about Nantlas. There was no chapel singing on Sundays now, because there was no minister. There was none on Saturday nights in the Miners’ Rests any more, because no one could afford the beer that fuelled dry throats. There was no warmth, no medicine, and precious little food because the benefit didn’t stretch to it. And now they wanted to cut that by twenty per cent.
‘It’s cleverer than that, even,’ Tony went on. His thin, quizzical face was stiff. ‘The City men know that they can win MacDonald round because he can’t do anything else. He’ll carry half the Cabinet with him. They’ll get the benefit cut, even if not by twenty per cent. But the rest of the Labour Cabinet, the Party and Bevin and the TUC, they won’t support it. So there’ll be a split, and a collapse of the Government. My guess is that they’ll opt for a coalition for the duration of the “National Crisis”. It will be the end of MacDonald in real political terms, and at the next general election, when everyone is tired of the crisis, why, a Conservative victory. It’s neat for Jaspert, isn’t it? I’m sure he is licking his lips. It’s financial salvation and political expediency all in one package.