She had been wondering what to do with the man once they were home. Where would she put him? What was he expecting? It was not a situation that Miss Abbott’s social deportment lessons had prepared her for.
Now she decided. This sharp, unsettling man would be treated just like any other guest in their house. Gerald was at Chance and Adeline was occupied with a new friend. That would make it easier, she thought, and at once felt that she was compromising her new allegiances by being grateful for that.
On the steps in front of the tall doors Amy ceremonially rang the bell instead of using her key. One of the footmen opened the door.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Amy.’
Inside, she said crisply, ‘This is Mr Penry. He will be staying the night. Perhaps it would be easiest if one of the maids made up Mr Richard’s room for him. And Mr Penry has been separated from his luggage. Would you see that some things are laid out for him? We’ll be ready for dinner at … oh, eight, I should think.’
‘Very good, Miss Amy.’
Nick Penry looked up from the marble floor to the high curve of the stairs and the crystal waterfall of the huge chandelier spilling light over them. There was an inlaid table encrusted with gilt with a silver tray on it and the afternoon’s post laid neatly out. Amy had automatically picked up her letters. It was very quiet; the muffled, dignified silence of money and privilege. Under the curve of the stairway with a scroll-backed sofa covered in pale green silk beneath it, there was a huge, dim oil painting of a big house. Row upon row of windows looked out expressionlessly over drowsy parkland.
Nick pointed to it. ‘That’s the country place, is it?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’ He was grinning at her, and there was a taunt in it that made her angry again.
‘Jesus Christ. Who are you?’
‘Amy Lovell.’
‘Should I be any the wiser?’
‘If you aren’t,’ Amy said, surprised at the tartness in her voice, ‘I’ll elaborate. My father is Lord Lovell. The Lords Lovell have been the King’s Defenders since the fourteenth century.’
‘How nice. Does that make you Lady Lovell?’
‘Of course not. That’s my mother. My title, by courtesy only, is the Honourable Amalia Lovell. My friends call me Amy.’
‘I see,’ Nick Penry said, pointedly not calling her anything. They stood underneath the chandelier, staring at each other.
The footman came back again.
‘John will show you upstairs, Mr Penry. Dinner will be at eight, if that suits you.’
Still the taunting grin and the odd, clear stare. ‘Oh, delightful.’
‘This way, sir.’ The footman was carefully not looking at the visitor’s gaping boots and the lamp clipped to his belt like a proclamation.
Amy went upstairs to her room. She ripped open the sheaf of envelopes she had picked up downstairs and stared unseeingly at the invitations. Then she remembered that she was supposed to be dining at Ebury Street. She telephoned Isabel and told her that there was an unexpected guest at Bruton Street.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Isabel said. ‘There would only have been us, anyway.’
‘Bel, are you all right?’
Concern cut through Amy’s preoccupation. Isabel’s voice sounded as if she had been crying.
‘Of course. Call me tomorrow if you like. I’m not doing anything much.’
Amy hung up, frowning, and automatically set about changing for dinner.
In Richard’s bedroom Nick Penry prowled to and fro between the cupboards and the bookshelves. He picked one of the leather-bound stamp albums out of the row and looked through the carefully set-out lines of tiny, vivid paper squares. There were dozens of books neatly shelved, most of them on art and architecture, but there were volumes of poetry too. The copy of Paradise Lost looked identical to the one that Nick had lost with his pack. The old rucksack had been pulled off his shoulders as he fought to Jake Silverman’s side in Trafalgar Square.
The Welfare library would expect him to pay for a lost book, Nick remembered.
Nick had asked the superior footman if he could make a telephone call, and he had been shown into a vast room lined with books. There were little tables with the newspapers and boxes of crested paper laid out, and a wide, polished desk with a silver inkstand and a green-shaded lamp. He had sat at the desk in a green leather chair to telephone Appleyard Street.
He told the girl at the other end what had happened to Jake, and gave her the doctor’s message. The sob of relief in her voice as she thanked him suddenly made Nick think of Mari and Dickon, alone in the damp, cheerless little house in Nantlas. He was struck with a sudden, sharp physical longing to hold them both in his arms.
Nick resumed his pacing. There were silver-backed brushes on the tallboy, and in the heavy, mirrored wardrobe there were what seemed like dozens of suits and coats and polished shoes. If Mr Richard was the frowning boy beside Amy Lovell in the silver-framed photograph on the tallboy, he was hardly more than a child. How could a child need so many clothes; own so many possessions? With a sharp clatter, Nick replaced another photograph, this one of a beautiful woman lounging in a basket chair with a spaniel on her lap.
As he stood there, Nick felt the ugly swell of anger within himself. It was a familiar feeling. He had known it since early boyhood when he had caught it from his father. Nick thought of the anger as an infection because it made him helpless while it lasted, and it clouded his thinking. It made him vicious, as he had felt on the night of the explosion long ago at Nantlas No. 1 pit, and that was of no benefit to anyone. It was better by far to be clear-headed. That was a better weapon in the battle that he had inherited from his father and mother. They had died early, of deprivation and exhaustion, but Nick knew that he had enough strength himself to last a long time yet. Nick’s father had lived by the Fed, and his son had adopted his faith. As soon as he was old enough to think for himself, Nick had gone further still. He had become a Communist because the steely principles of Marxism seemed to offer an intellectual solution beyond the capitalist tangle that bled dry the pits and the men who worked them.
But yet sometimes Nick couldn’t suppress the anger. It came when he looked at Dickon, and when he watched Mari working in the comfortless back kitchen at home. And it came to smother him now in the rich, padded opulence of Amy Lovell’s home.
Nick slowly clenched and unclenched his fists, and then shook his head from side to side as if to clear it.
First thing tomorrow, he promised himself, he would be off.
The swell of anger began to subside again, as he had learned it always did. Deliberately he began to peel off his grimy clothes.
He was here, now. There was nothing he could do here, tonight, in this particular house. He didn’t know why the girl had brought him here, but something in her ardent, sensitive face worked on his anger too, diminishing it.
He would make use of the house, Nick thought, by taking whatever was offered to him. He found a plaid robe behind the door and wrapped himself in it. He stood his lamp on the tallboy next to the silver brushes and went across to the bathroom that the footman had pointed out to him.
A deep, hot bath had already been drawn. There were piles of thick, warm towels and new cakes of green marbled soap. The brass taps gleamed and the mirrors over the mahogany panels were misted with steam. As he sank into the water and gratefully felt the heat drawing the aches out of his body, Nick was thinking about Nantlas again. In Nantlas, baths were made of tin and they were hauled in from the wash house and set in front of the fire in the back kitchen. Then a few inches of hot water were poured in from jugs. He sat up abruptly, splashing the mirrors.
How much longer could they last, these gulfs? Between the people who had things and the people who didn’t?