The White Dove

Amy knelt down beside Jake. He must still be alive if that man’s gone for help, she thought stupidly. She undid her coat and took it off, wrapping the soft folds over the crumpled body as best she could. Then she untied her silk scarf and put it under his head. He was so heavy, and there wasn’t a flicker of movement.

‘Jake,’ she whispered. ‘What can I do to help you?’

She had no idea. She took his cold hand and held it, bitterly thinking that she was completely useless. She had marched along Oxford Street, singing and shouting and feeling proud of herself, yet now she was needed for something real and she was failing them. Jake was going to die here on the pavement outside St Martin-in-the-Fields because she didn’t know how to save him.

A knot of people had gathered round them, and she looked up at the faces. ‘Does anyone know any first aid?’

They shook their heads, sympathetic but unhelpful.

‘Nah. Ambulance’ll be along just now.’

The seconds ticked by and Jake didn’t move. Amy went on holding his hand and found herself praying. Please God, let him be all right. Please God, let him …

The miner came back again.

He knelt down on the other side of Jake and felt his wrist, then turned his head to one side. Amy was surprised by the gentleness of his scarred hands.

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry …’

‘Nothing you could do,’ he answered without looking at her. ‘He needs hospital.’

Almost at once they heard the siren. The ambulance was ploughing up through the crowds on the east side of the square. Amy looked up and saw the high white side of it with the reassuring red cross.

‘Thank God,’ she said, and the miner looked up and smiled in relief for the first time. I know you, Amy thought.

The ambulance-men came running with their rolled-up green canvas stretcher. They spread it out beside Jake and lifted him on to it, then hoisted his weight up into the dark mouth of the ambulance.

From the folding metal steps the miner jerked his head at Amy. ‘You’d better come too.’

She scrambled in and the doors slammed behind them. They sped away in the direction the ambulance had come.

The miner leaned back against the hard wooden bench opposite the stretcher. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Your man will be all right.’

‘He isn’t my man,’ Amy said. ‘I just know him.’

The man was still smiling, and she knew why she recognized him. He was the tall miner who had marched under the Nantlas banner, and had smiled out over the crowds in his enviable certainty.

‘How do you know he’ll be all right?’

‘I’ve seen enough head injuries,’ he answered abruptly.

The ambulance was slowing again. Charing Cross Hospital, Amy thought, and again: Thank God.

Light flooded in at them as the doors swung open. The stretcher was lifted and carried out and they followed behind it into the hospital. Another ambulance had arrived immediately behind them, and the hallway was full of hurrying people in white uniforms. Two nurses came forward to meet Jake’s stretcher as it was lifted on to a trolley. His hand hung limply at one side. One of the nurses peeled back the ambulance blanket and Amy’s coat. She held it out briskly to Amy. ‘Do you know this patient?’

Amy opened her mouth, but the miner forestalled her. ‘His name is Jacob Silverman. I am a relative. I will look after his things for him.’

Smoothly he removed a worn leather wallet and a little book from Jake’s pocket, and smiled at the nurse.

‘I’m afraid you can’t do that …’ she began, and then shrugged.

‘We’ll wait out here until the doctor has seen him,’ the miner said. The nurses wheeled Jake away, and Amy watched them until they disappeared around a maroon-tiled corner.

‘Shall we sit down?’

There was a double row of hard wooden chairs down the length of the hall, and they found two empty ones side by side.

A man passed them, supported by two others, his nose streaming blood.

‘Quite a fight,’ Amy’s companion said. He was flicking quickly through Jake’s little book, and then through the few papers and notes in the old wallet. He frowned at one piece of folded paper and slipped it into his own pocket, then closed the things up again.

‘Did you see what happened?’ he asked.

‘Two men were holding him. Another man hit him with something that looked like a metal bar. There was a policeman on a horse right beside them. Who’d want to do that to Jake?’

The man was looking at her. Amy saw him looking at her face and hair, and then at her hands. She was surprised to find that she was still clutching her handbag.

‘How well do you know Jake?’

‘I met him once at Appleyard Street.’

‘And what were you doing at Appleyard Street?’

Amy felt a prickle of resentment. Why, after what had just happened, was this man questioning her?

‘Just visiting,’ she said coolly.

‘I see. Just a tourist?’ His voice was equally cool.

‘I suppose so.’ His suspicion aroused her own and she looked squarely at him.

‘What did you take from Jake’s pocket?’

The miner grinned. ‘Can’t you work that out? If you know who Jake is, and what he does?’

They sat in silence after that. Amy watched the nurses coming and going, moving quickly but unhurriedly. It seemed a very long time.

At last a doctor came round the corner. A nurse beside him pointed to them.

‘Are you Mr Silverman’s friends?’

They nodded.

‘There’s nothing to worry about. He has some concussion, but there is no skull fracture and he should regain consciousness before too long. We will have to keep him here for a few days, of course. I understand you are a relative?’

‘That’s right.’

The doctor’s eyes flicked over the dark clothes and the lamp at the man’s belt, but he said nothing. ‘In that case, perhaps you would inform his next of kin. You may say that the sister in ward two may be telephoned for news of him in the morning.’

‘Thank you.’ The man held out Jake’s wallet and book. ‘I said that I would take care of these for him, but if he’s going to be conscious soon he might worry about where they have gone. Will you take them for him?’

The nurse held out her hand and Amy and the miner turned away. Still in silence they went out and stood in the hospital courtyard. The clouds of the afternoon had all drifted away and the sky was the colour of pearl, pink-tinged in the west.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

Amy glanced at her watch. ‘Half past six.’

‘Everything will be all over, then,’ the man said. His voice sounded flat and, for the first time, uncertain. They began to walk together, still in silence, heading automatically for Trafalgar Square. When they reached it the crowds had evaporated. There were just the ordinary passers-by, a pair of patrolling policemen and a handful of men dismantling the makeshift platform.

‘Which way is Downing Street?’

Amy pointed. There was no sign of the long column of miners, or any of the crowds and placards that had filled the afternoon.

The man turned in a circle, looking all round him. ‘Well,’ he said, and Amy suddenly saw how tired he was. ‘That’s that, then. I wonder where they’ve gone?’

‘I read in one of the papers,’ Amy said carefully, ‘that the marchers were to be put up while they were in London in Bethnal Green Town Hall.’

‘Ah.’ The man’s smile was wry. ‘And which way is that?’

Amy pointed eastwards down the Strand. He hitched his jacket around him, still smiling. ‘I’d better start off that way, then.’

‘Wait.’ Amy was thinking quickly. I’m on your side, she wanted to say, remembering Hyde Park and the flapping of the boots as the men marched past her. I always will be, however uselessly. But there was something about this man that disconcerted her. There were two pound notes in her bag, but he wasn’t the kind of man to have money pressed into his hand.

What kind of man was he, then?

‘Why did you steal that paper from Jake’s wallet?’

The man was much taller than Amy. He looked down at her and she saw that he had unusual grey-green eyes, and that he was amused.

‘Steal it? To eat, perhaps? Or to start a fire to keep warm by? Listen, whoever you are. Written on that piece of paper were addresses that are important to us. Addresses of Communist Party organizers, sympathizers, the whole network. Better that the police shouldn’t see it if they come to see him and happen to search him.’

‘The police?’ Amy was going to protest They wouldn’t, and then she remembered the big horses with their shiny hooves.

The man gestured his impatience with her. ‘Of course. Jake Silverman is a dangerous Communist agitator.’ Amy bent her head to escape his grey, distant stare.

As she looked down at the paving stones she saw her own polished shoes with their elegant toes pointing at the miner’s worn, gaping boots.

Amy forgot his hostility. There was something she could do to help him, she thought. There was no need for him to trudge the last miles to Bethnal Green in those boots, and there was no need either to risk his scorn by trying to give him money. Bruton Street was a big house full of bedrooms that no one would occupy tonight. It was her home, and she could invite this man to stay the night there as her guest. As soon as the thought came to her she looked up and met his eyes again.

‘If you haven’t got anywhere to stay tonight,’ she said at last, ‘you could have a bed at my home.’

His eyebrows went up into black peaks.

‘Your home? And where’s that?’

His coldness angered her. She had made her impulsive offer in a spirit of straightforward friendliness, and she wanted him to accept it in the same way.

‘Does it matter where it is?’ she snapped.

The miner shrugged. ‘Not really. I’m sure it will be better than the Spike. Shall we go, then?’

There was a taxi passing them. Amy flung up her arm and it rumbled to the kerb. The cabbie scowled at the miner, but Amy wrenched open the door and scrambled inside and the man followed her.

‘Bruton Street,’ she called sharply through the partition, and the driver muttered something about it being fine for some people, as they trundled grudgingly away. The man leaned back and closed his eyes, and she saw the exhaustion in his face. Her anger evaporated, bafflingly.

‘My name’s Amy,’ she said.

‘Nick Penry,’ he answered without opening his eyes. After a moment he added, ‘Thank you. I don’t know where Bethnal Green is, but I don’t want to walk there tonight.’

‘You come from Nantlas, don’t you?’

She was aware of his quick sidelong glance at her now but she kept her face turned away, pretending to be watching the streets sliding past.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw you under the banner. At Hyde Park. I … know someone else from there.’

‘Do you, indeed? That surprises me a little.’ Nick Penry’s eyes were closed again and Amy continued to stare out of the window, her cheeks reddened. Neither of them spoke again until they rolled into Bruton Street.

Damn you, Amy thought.

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?

Not for ever, Nick promised himself. Not for ever, by any means.

When he put the plaid robe on again and padded back to the bedroom he found that his clothes had been removed. In their place was a dinner suit with a boiled shirt and a stiff collar, a butterfly tie, even a pair of patent shoes that shone like mirrors. Black silk socks. Underwear with the creases still sharp which looked as if it had just been unfolded from tissue.

‘For God’s sake,’ Nick Penry murmured.

It was exactly five minutes to eight. Someone tapped discreetly at the door. He flung it open to confront Amy.

‘Um. I thought you might be ready,’ she said. Her cheeks went faintly pink. ‘I’ll come back later.’

Nick jabbed his finger at the clothes on the bed. ‘I won’t wear this get-up. Where have my clothes gone?’

‘I expect they’ve taken them away to dry them properly for you. What’s wrong with the ones they’ve given you?’

‘Everything. D’you really think I’d put all that lot on?’

Amy’s face went a deeper pink. She pushed past him into the room. ‘I don’t give a damn what you wear. Come down to dinner in my little brother’s dressing-gown, if that’s what you feel like.’

Nick suddenly wanted to laugh. Instead he leant against the door frame and folded his arms. ‘A shirt and jersey and an ordinary pair of trousers will do nicely, thank you.’ He watched her flinging open drawers and rummaging through cupboards, suddenly noticing how pretty she was without the disfiguring beret that she had worn all afternoon. She had thick, shiny hair that was an unusual dark red, and warm, clear skin that coloured easily. Her eyes were the bluey-green colour that often went with red hair. She was wearing a creamy-coloured dress of some soft material that was slightly too fussy for her, Nick thought, but she had exceptionally pretty calves and ankles that her high-heeled, pointy-toed shoes with ankle-straps displayed to perfection.

‘Very nice,’ Nick said smoothly. She was holding out a navy-blue jersey that Richard had put away because it was too big for him. There was a plain white shirt too.

‘Leave the shirt unbuttoned if it’s much too tight,’ she said sharply. ‘I shall have to go and look for some trousers belonging to my father. Richard’s will be far too small.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Nick called after her, laughing when she could no longer see him.

A moment or two later she came back with an unexceptional pair of grey flannel trousers. Nick took them.

‘His lordship’s very own?’ he asked, grinning, and Amy snatched her hand away in case their fingers touched. Why did he find her so amusing? It annoyed her. ‘Give me two minutes to change. Unless you’d rather stay?’

‘No, thank you.’

Amy shut the door behind her a little too firmly, and stood in the corridor wondering how Nick Penry had driven her so quickly into prissy defensiveness. He came out very quickly, a tall man with his black hair smoothed down and Richard’s blue jersey tight across his shoulders. Amy had taken the time to collect herself. She was on her own ground, after all. She wouldn’t let this man make her feel like a curiosity in her own home. ‘Let’s go down to dinner,’ she said evenly. ‘You must be hungry.’

‘A little,’ he agreed. ‘It’s so hard to get a decent luncheon on the road. Today’s was bread and margarine.’

Amy stared straight ahead of her. ‘I think you’ll find that dinner will be an improvement on that.’

They went down the stairs in silence. Nick looked up at the portraits as they passed them.

The footman was waiting at the dining-room doors. He held them open as Nick and Amy passed through, and Mr Glass stood waiting behind Amy’s chair. The velvet curtains had been drawn against the cold spring evening, and in the warm glow of shaded lamps Nick saw the elaborate plaster cornice picked out in cream and gold, the cream and gold upholstered chair seats, the smooth curves of the marble fireplace and the delicate colours of Adeline’s collection of early English porcelain shelved on either side of it. A pair of branched silver-gilt candelabra stood on the table, with tall new candles all alight, and an array of silver cutlery, crystal glasses and starched napery.

Nick and Amy sat down, facing each other across the polished gulf of the table. From a white china tureen with curved handles and tiny garlands of gold-painted flowers soup was ladled into bowls so thin that they were almost transparent. On the bowls, and the handles of the cutlery, and worked into the heavy linen napkins, was the same crest, a crowned lion in a wreath of laurel leaves. The footman offered bread wrapped in a napkin folded into intricate peaks, and the butler poured pale gold wine into the glasses. Reflections wavered back at once from the polished wood.

They sat waiting. The servants moved discreetly, making sure that everything was in place. Then the doors closed silently behind them.

Nick looked at Amy. He had been about to say something sharp, mocking, but then he saw how young she was, not more than twenty, and how anxious. It occurred to him that it had been brave of her to bring him here, and sit him down in the face of all this silk and gold. He swallowed the abrasive words and said, ‘May I eat this now?’