Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White

Even Tony looked a little sleeker. His shapeless evening clothes were at least well brushed, and his thin, quizzical face seemed to have filled out. Amy had a renewed sense of time passing, and leaving her.

Tony kissed her. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘I can see that it’s a good enough book for you to have to publish it. Whether Richard should have written it in the first place is a different matter.’

‘Dearest, don’t start all over again. Another bottle, I think?’

Later, they went on to a nightclub. It was a far less grand establishment than Ondine’s, and Richard and Tony seemed to be habitués. As soon as Richard came in he was surrounded by an admiring knot of people.

‘The literary lion!’

‘Darling, I must paint you. Say yes, won’t you?’

Leaving him to it, Tony led Amy on to the dance floor. Peering through the gloom, she saw that more than half the couples were men dancing together. The enclosed space was a forest of feathers and sequins and glitter. Reading Amy’s expression, Tony murmured, ‘Well, I suppose it is rather louche. Do you mind?’

‘I’m flattered you should think me sufficiently one of the boys to bring me here.’

He laughed and hugged her. ‘I bring Angel Mack, sometimes. She always pretends to despise it, but she dresses to the nines and has the time of her life.’

Amy rested her head on Tony’s shoulder as they went on dancing. If it weren’t for Tony Hardy, she would never have gone to Appleyard Street.

And so would never have known Nick.

The fragility of chances stretched backwards, and onwards. Don’t miss the chance of happiness, however fragile, Amy knew instinctively. And the thought of Nick made her throat tighten. She lost the rhythm of her step and stumbled against Tony. He steadied her and they stood still for a moment in the crowd. Tony stared straight into her face.

‘You look different,’ he said.

‘So people keep telling me.’

‘Or no, not exactly different. As if you’re certain of something.’

‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘That’s it exactly. I am certain, at last.’

She stayed at Bruton Street for another three days. She fielded the telephone calls for Richard, growing adept at evasion. She lunched and shopped with Adeline, and went for fittings for clothes she didn’t need. Adeline’s tame expert did her hair, and she had tea with Violet Trent, now married, and dinner with one of Johnny Guild’s old set. She went to The Marriage of Figaro and a charity dance. She did everything calmly, watching herself parade through the days, and every moment she thought of Nick.

She knew, with certainty, that she wouldn’t be coming back to any of this. Whatever might happen to them together he was already powerful enough to have stopped it all for her.

She said a measured goodbye, and then she went back to Chance.

*

There was the familiar single taxicab waiting in the hope of a fare at the station. Amy had known the driver for years, and he tipped his hat to her.

‘‘Afternoon, Miss Lovell. Up to the House, is it? A fine day for coming home.’

Coming home, she echoed in her head.

The park was midsummer green, patched with the shade of the old trees. Amy looked towards the dark fringe of woodland on the north side. The cottage was hidden in its remote hollow.

She paid the driver and walked into the cool of the hallway. One of Gerald’s spaniels flopped down from a chair and came to be fussed over. Amy rubbed the silky ears. ‘Where is he, boy? Show me.’ With a flurry of its tail the dog bustled away, its toenails clicking faintly on the oak boards.

Amy found her father in the gun room. He was sitting with his back to the door amidst the dead season’s clutter. He had been re-reading the old game books from before the War.

He put his hand out to the spaniel before acknowledging Amy.

‘Down, Pollux.’ When at last he did glance up at her it was clear that he knew. The change in him was startling. The vertical furrows were pulled deeper in his cheeks and the corners of his mouth turned down with a new bitterness. Worse than that was Gerald’s bewilderment. He had aged ten years, and to Amy he looked on the verge of senility. His hand grasping the leather arm of his chair was shaking.

Amy went quickly and knelt beside the chair.

‘Daddy …’ she began, and he turned to stare at her. The old, piercing look that threatened explosions had turned milky and unfocused, and it frightened her far more.

‘Daddy, he …’

Gerald might not have heard her. ‘So. I hear my son’s a bugger,’ he said. Even his voice had aged. It was thinner, without its old resonance.

‘Have you read the book?’ she asked gently.

The violence of the shaky hand’s gesture made Amy start backwards.

‘I don’t want to read that sort of filth. Hearing about it was enough.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Morton.’

Of course, it would be Morton. He was her father’s country solicitor, a malicious and small-minded little man whom Richard had often cruelly mimicked. Morton would consider it his duty to inform his lordship of what was being vulgarly bruited abroad. Amy could hear the very pompousness of his words and his measured, judgemental cadences. Gerald could hardly have received the news more damagingly.

‘I have read it. Only since I’ve been away. I didn’t know anything about it before. It’s a good book, Papa. It’s very sad, and honest. Richard shouldn’t have done it, for your sake, but for himself I think it was brave. I don’t think he chose to be the way he is. It can’t be … particularly happy for him.’

Gerald’s taut mouth showed his disgust.

‘So it’s not Richard’s fault? Of course, it couldn’t be. I suppose you want to say it’s mine? Or your mother’s. Yours and Isabel’s too, perhaps.’

Perhaps, Amy thought. All our faults. Even Airlie’s.

But she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said sadly.

Gerald screwed up a loose sheet of paper and flung it away from him. ‘I don’t want to see him. Never again, never, in my house. If the estate wasn’t entailed on him I’d will it away today. You and Isabel could have it.’ He put his face in his hands, ‘Poor Chance. When I’m gone your brother will fill it with bum boys and dancing niggers and scum. He’ll cut down my trees to pay their bills.’

Even as he spoke, Amy could hear Richard parodying Gerald in the very same words. It was cruel, and cruelly ironic that her father’s vision of a bleak and corrupt modernity was not so far removed from Richard’s own pessimism. The realization stirred sour laughter in Amy.