The White Dove

‘I liked her,’ Amy said.

‘I like her too. But it doesn’t mean I have to trust her, or believe what she says.’

The silence that followed was awkward, and Amy wished fervently that she had kept Angel’s remark to herself. In the end Tony said, with his old lightness, ‘My views on marriage are the same as yours. So we don’t need to mention it again, do we?’

‘No. Why should we?’

But neither of them could find anything else to say, and the cab rumbled to a stop in Bruton Street. Tony paid the driver, and they got out and watched it rattle away again.

‘Don’t you need him to take you home?’ Amy asked. ‘I don’t even know where you live,’ she added sadly.

‘Not far from Appleyard Street. I’ll walk back. I like walking at night. It’s my thinking time.’

In the shadow of the front doors, Amy fumbled in her handbag.

‘Don’t you have to ring to be let in?’

‘Not after midnight. I agreed it with Mother. It isn’t fair to Glass and the footmen. I’ve got my own key. Father doesn’t know.’

Tony put the key in the lock for her, and the door swung open. He didn’t even glance inside at the cavernous hallway.

‘You do have quite a lot of freedom, you know. You shouldn’t complain.’

‘I’m not, any more. Good night, Tony. Thank you for this evening.’

Amy turned to him, and Tony saw the curve of her cheek, and the shadow of her eyelashes under her hat brim. He kissed her, very quickly, just brushing the corner of her mouth with his own.

‘Good night,’ he answered.

Amy felt a faint, vanishing flicker of disappointment. But what else could she expect from him here in the front doorway?

‘Next time I take you out,’ he added, ‘we’ll do something more orthodox. Dinner, perhaps?’

‘Yes, please.’

He was turning away when Amy called after him.

‘Tony? Are you a Communist?’

He chuckled. ‘There are a number of shades of opinion to the left of Peter Jaspert, you know. No, I’m not a Party member. I belong to the ILP. The Independent Labour Party. Good night, Amy Lovell.’

Amy closed the big door quietly behind her, and made sure that the bolts were secure. Then she walked slowly up the great curve of staircase. On the first floor, where in the daytime a high glass dome brought light spilling down into the well of the house, she stopped under a line of portraits. The King’s Defenders, back over the centuries. Would Gerald, she wondered, take up the ceremonial sword to defend his Sovereign against Jake Silverman, and Kay and Angel and even Tony Hardy, when their revolution came? And on which side of the barricades would Amy Lovell be standing?

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said aloud to the row of impassive faces. ‘I’ve no idea at all. I should start thinking about it, shouldn’t I?’

Upstairs, Amy saw that the light was still on in the old night nursery. Bethan was sitting in an armchair beside the fire, knitting. She pursed her lips when Amy came in.

‘It’s very late, lamb. I was beginning to worry.’

Amy knelt down beside her and put her head on Bethan’s shoulder. Bethan hugged her as she used to do when Amy was little.

‘Don’t worry about me so much. Bethan … I wanted to ask you something.’ The thought of the Rhondda, and the things that Kay Cooper had told her about the way people were living there, was vivid in her mind.

‘What’s that, then?’ Bethan was rolling up her knitting. Usually Bethan looked to Amy exactly as she had done for fifteen years, ever since she had come to Chance as a sixteen-year-old nurserymaid. She was plumper now, but her round, plain face was as cheerful as it had always been, and she moved with the same quick energy. But tonight Amy saw that her eyes were heavy and dark, and her shoulders sagged. It was almost two in the morning, and Bethan was exhausted with waiting up for her. She realized that she had never glimpsed that tiredness before, and she frowned at the recognition of her own selfishness.

‘It doesn’t matter tonight,’ Amy said quickly. ‘You go to bed now. I don’t need anything. Bethan?’ The maid stopped in the doorway. ‘Thank you for looking after us all.’

‘Go on with you now.’

Nick Penry reached up for the old khaki kitbag that had been stowed away on top of the wardrobe. He shook it out, and began carelessly stuffing a few pieces of clothing into it.

Mari had been watching in silence, her chapped hands gripping the brass bed-rail, but now she said, ‘Let me do that. You’ll mix everything up.’

Silently he handed the bag to her. Mari refolded the two shirts and the darned pullover and socks. Her eyes were blurred with tears and she shook her head angrily to clear them. Nick sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the faded linoleum with his hands hanging loosely between his knees.

They had been arguing again.

They had always argued, right from the beginning, but they had always been able to make it up again, fiercely or gently, in bed.

But they couldn’t do that now, or almost never. Mari had changed from the rosy-cheeked provocative girl she had been when she married into a white, frightened woman. She was afraid of anything worse happening to them, afraid of anything that might disturb the fragile equilibrium they lived by. She was afraid of another handicapped baby. She was afraid for Dickon, now and in the future when the two of them wouldn’t be here to care for him any longer. She was afraid of Nick turning on the Means Test man, who came to peer insultingly at their back kitchen in search of any unexplained luxuries that might point to money coming in beyond the bare minimum they existed on. If there was any hint that they earned money elsewhere, their tiny unemployment benefit would be cut off. She was afraid of any of them falling ill, because there was nothing spare to pay for that. And she was newly afraid of Nick’s convictions, the flaring beliefs that made him revile the soft options, the ‘company unionism’ that was threatening to spread in the hard times, and despise the owners and the government for their agreement that increased the miners’ hours to eight a day underground again, instead of seven and a half. She was afraid that Nick would never get a job again. He had stepped too far out of line. His name was known to the owners and their agents.

And all her fear seemed to trigger off the very opposite in Nick, as if he had to stand firm for both of them. He clung harder to what he believed in, to the socialist ideals that earned the nickname ‘Little Moscow’ for their corner of the bleak, depopulated valleys. It made him angrier, and more determined, and somehow less knowable. It didn’t make him any easier to love. And now he was setting off to march to London, and she was afraid of being without him.

With a sob, she dropped the bag and went to sit beside him. He put his arm around her, warm and protective.

‘Have you got to go?’

‘You know I do. If I don’t, why should anyone else bother? It’s something we can do to make people across the country look at us, and think about us. If we can just get public opinion with us, Mari. The Miners’ executive are meeting MacDonald again, to try to win him over, make him understood what we want, and why. He’s not to be trusted, but Henderson is on our side. The march might make the difference.’

Mari’s face was wet with tears. She hated the words. They were too familiar, too impersonal.

‘Can’t you let the others go for once? Stay here with Dickon and me. We need you more than they do.’

Gently Nick let her go. ‘You know I can’t do that. It’ll only be two weeks. I’ll get a ride back somehow.’

He took up a blanket wrapped in a gabardine cape that had belonged to his father. He strapped it beneath the bag, then swung the bag on to his back. It hung there, tellingly almost empty.

‘Best to be travelling light,’ Nick said. ‘It’s time to be going, love.’

They left the room in silence. It was very early, hardly light yet, and Dickon was still asleep in the other bedroom, no more than a cupboard at the stairhead. Nick stooped in the doorway and knelt by the low bed to kiss him. When the child was asleep he looked like any other little boy, the liveliness briefly rubbed out of his face by oblivion. Nick looked at him for a long moment, hopelessly wishing.

‘You’d better have something before you go,’ Mari said flatly.

She went down to the icy kitchen and stirred the fire under its blanket of coal dust. With a horseshoe of solidly twisted newspaper she coaxed up a brief blaze and set the kettle on it. Then she brought the heel of a loaf out of the pantry and sliced it, spreading it carefully with thick dripping out of a blue-glazed bowl.

‘I don’t need that,’ Nick said. ‘You and the boy have it.’

‘You’ve left us more than enough money,’ Mari said.