The White Dove

After she had gone Gerald poured himself a last glass of whisky from the decanter and looked across at Amy.

‘You’ll miss your sister, won’t you?’

She nodded, surprised.

‘Mn. Yes. You’ve been close, the three of you. Things being … as they are.’

Amy waited, wondering if he was going to say anything else. If he was going to ask her where Richard was, even mention him at all. Dimly, she felt that he wanted to but couldn’t begin, and she was clumsily unable to help him. But Gerald turned away, saying irritably, ‘Well. It’ll be your turn next, marrying some damn fool who can’t even wear proper evening clothes like a gentleman.’

‘Everyone wears dinner jackets these days,’ Amy said mildly. ‘Peter’s hardly in the shocking forefront there.’ She felt disappointed, as if something important had almost happened and then been interrupted.

‘Good night,’ Gerald said.

She went to him and kissed his cheek, and felt as she touched him that he was suddenly quite old.

Amy went slowly up the stairs to her room. Her jaw felt cracked with smiling and her head ached. It was a familiar feeling at the end of an evening. She even brought it home with her from debutante dances, when she was supposed to be dancing, and enjoying herself, and falling in love. As Isabel had done, presumably. But Amy doubted that it would ever work for her. Amy had begun her first Season, two years ago now, with all the zest and enthusiasm that she brought to anything new. The dances had seemed amazingly glamorous after the strictures of Miss Abbott’s school, and the men she met had all struck her as sophisticated and witty. But then, so quickly that she was ashamed, the idea of another dance with the same band, and the same food, and the same faces, preceded by the same sort of dinner with a new identical partner whose name was the only thing that distinguished him from the last, had become dull instead of exciting. Amy was puzzled to find that most of the young men bored her, whether they were soldiers, or City men, or just young men who went to dances all the time. The few who didn’t bore her made her shy, and tongue-tied, and they soon drifted on to the vivacious girls whom Amy envied because they always looked as if they were enjoying themselves so much. Isabel had been one of them. She had the ability to look happy and interested, wherever she was, and she had been one of the most popular girls of her year. Peter Jaspert was lucky to have her.

Amy shivered a little and sat down at her writing desk again. She pulled her big, black leather-covered journal towards her. She tried to write something every day, even though the aridity of the last months was more of a reproach than a pleasure. Desultorily, before starting to write, she flicked back through the pages. Here were the early days, full of schoolroom passions and rivalries, and long accounts of hunting at Chance. Two years ago came the explosion of her coming out, with minute descriptions of every dress and every conversation. Here was the night when a subaltern had kissed her in a taxi, and she had felt his collarstud digging into her and the shaved-off prickle of hair at the nape of his neck. She had thought sadly of Luis, and politely let the boy go on kissing her until they reached their destination.

Amy turned to the day of her presentation at Court. At three o’clock in the afternoon she had dressed in a long white satin dress with a train, tight snow-white gloves that came up over her elbows, and Lady Lovell’s maid had secured two white Prince of Wales’ feathers in her hair.

A great day [she had written]. Why was I so nervous? The Mall was one long line of cars to the Palace gates with white feathers nodding in each one. There were people all along the roadside to watch us arriving. Then all at once we were walking down the long red carpets past the flunkeys and there were seven girls in white dresses in front of me, then four, three, two and one, then I heard my name and all I could think was gather the train up, step forward, right foot behind left, head bowed and down, down, count to three and then up again. I didn’t fall over or drop my flowers. And then the King said something about Father at the Coronation …

Someone tapped at Amy’s door.

‘It’s me. Can I come in? I can’t sleep at all.’

Isabel came in wrapped in her old dressing-gown, and sat down on the bed.

‘Are you scared?’ Amy asked, and she shook her head.

‘Not exactly. Just thinking how … important it all is. How did Peter look?’

‘Very handsome,’ Amy said truthfully. ‘And he was wonderful with Uncle Edward and the colonel and all the rest of them.’

‘He is, isn’t he? I look at him sometimes when we’re with people and I feel so proud of him, and yet I feel that I don’t know him at all, and that he isn’t the private kind of man he is when we’re alone together.’

‘Do you know the private man, as you call it?’

Isabel blushed. ‘Not … not altogether physically, if you mean that. Neither of us felt that that was the right thing to do. But I think I do understand him. When he asked me to marry him, everything seemed suddenly simple, and clear, and I knew that I should accept.’

‘I’m glad,’ Amy said softy.

They were silent for a moment, and then Isabel asked in a lighter voice, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just writing in my diary. Or no, not even that. Looking back, instead of facing up to today. I was reading about the day I was presented. It seemed so important then, and so completely pointless now.’

Isabel laughed. ‘Oh dear, yes. I remember mine. I was directly behind Anne Lacy, who looked so beautiful no one could take their eyes off her. I could have been wearing trousers and a lampshade on my head and no one would have noticed.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. The Prince of Wales danced with you twice, the very same evening.’

‘Oh, do you remember? Mother thought our hour had come at last. Now you’ll have to marry him instead.’

‘Not a chance. I can never think of a word to say. Insipidity personified. I don’t know why Mother doesn’t try for him herself. She’s much more his type.’ They were still laughing, and Amy was thinking Is this the last time we’ll do this? when they heard quick, unsteady footsteps outside.

‘Is this a private party, my sisters, or can anyone join in?’

‘Richard.’

He was still wearing his school change coat, and his hair and trousers were soaked with rain.

‘I walked. From Soho, can you imagine? Tell me quickly, am I disinherited completely?’

‘Nothing was said. Father just gave us one of his white, silent looks when he realized you weren’t coming.’

‘Poor old tyrant. What about Mother?’

‘Worried about the table. You were promised to Lady Jaspert.’

‘Oh, dear God. Well, too late to worry now. And look, I’m not all bad. I’ve brought us this. The little man promised me that it was cold enough. Chilled further, I should think, by being hugged to my icy chest.’

From the recesses of his coat Richard produced a bottle of champagne. ‘Do you have any glasses in your boudoir, Amy, or shall I nip downstairs for some?’

‘You’ll have to go and get some. And change your clothes at the same time or you’ll get pneumonia.’

‘Well now, isn’t this snug?’ Richard reappeared in a thick tartan dressing-gown that made him look like a little boy again. He had rubbed his hair dry so that it stood up in fluffy peaks. He opened the champagne dexterously and poured it without spilling a drop.

‘Where have you been?’ Isabel asked. ‘It doesn’t matter about the party, and I’m glad you’ve turned up for the wedding itself, but you’re much too young to be wandering about in Soho, and drinking. Don’t pretend you haven’t been.’

‘I wouldn’t pretend to pretend,’ Richard said equably. He had developed the habit of looking out at the world under lowered eyelids that still didn’t disguise the quickness of his stare. He raised his glass to his sister. ‘Long life and happiness to you, Isabel. And I suppose that has to include Jaspert too. May his acres remain as broad as his beam and his fortunes in the pink like his face …’

‘Shut up, Richard,’ Amy ordered. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I came up on the four o’clock train like a good little boy. I was going to have tea with Tony Hardy at his publishing house and then come home to change. You remember Tony? As a matter of fact he’s coming to the wedding. I got Mother to ask him. D’you mind him being at your wedding, Bel?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Good. It will be a help to me, you know, to have an ally amongst the ranks of duchesses. So, I went decorously to meet Tony at Randle & Cates and we talked about an idea I have. Then Tony suggested that we go across to the pub for a drink. Somehow one thing led to another, after that. We had dinner with a jazz singer and a woman who owns a nightclub, and about twenty others. It was a good deal more interesting than school supper and study hour, I can tell you. I lost Tony in the course of it all, and when I finally decided to extricate myself I realized that I had laid out my last farthing on your champagne and had to walk all the way back here in the rain. There you are. Nothing too culpable in that, is there?’

‘Tony Hardy should know better,’ Isabel said.

‘Unlike you, Tony knows that I can perfectly well take care of myself.’

‘I’m jealous,’ Amy told him. ‘I’ve never met a jazz singer in my life. Didn’t you look rather peculiar, a schoolboy amongst all those people?’

‘I was the object of some interest,’ Richard said with satisfaction, ‘but no one thought anything was peculiar. That’s the point, you see. Everything is acceptable, whatever it is.’

‘It’s not exactly the conventional way to behave.’ Isabel was frowning.