Hesitantly at first, and then more fluently as he prompted her with questions, Amy began to talk about her family. She told Nick about Isabel’s marriage, and how lost she felt without her.
‘Jaspert the Tory MP?’ Nick asked, and she nodded. She told Nick about the way Richard and their father stalked painfully around each other, and about Airlie’s death in the War. She talked about Richard’s friendship with Tony Hardy, and her own growing one. Nick smiled sardonically. He leaned back in his fragile chair and hooked one arm over the back, biting into a russet apple from Chance while Amy described her mother’s confusing appearances and disappearances, and how important Bethan’s constancy had been to them as children. She was surprised by how easy it was to talk to Nick.
She told him about the lunches, and the parties and dances that filled her time, and her descriptions of the people she met made him laugh. When he laughed naturally, and the coldness of his stare disappeared, Amy thought how different he looked.
Then, when they had drunk the last of the wine between them and her guest seemed to have finished eating at last, Amy said, ‘Well. That’s all I’ve done, up until now. It isn’t very much is it? But today did help me to decide something.’ As she spoke she felt a bubble of optimism rising inside her. She would tell Nick Penry about the germ of an idea that had been growing since this afternoon, and telling him would help to fix her intentions.
‘I’ve never felt so useless, or so helpless, as I did this afternoon. Just sitting on that pavement outside St Martin’s with Jake, and not knowing what to do. He might have died there beside me, and all I could think of was wrapping him in my coat. I don’t want to feel like that ever again.’ Amy took a deep breath and then said, ‘I’m going to train to be a nurse.’
As soon as the words were out, she was quite certain that she had found the answer she was looking for.
Nick said calmly, ‘And do you think you’ll make a good nurse?’
Amy was laughing in the candlelight. ‘I’ll be a better nurse than a debutante. Do you think it’s a good idea?’
Suddenly, it seemed very important that he should think it was.
‘I think it’s a fine idea.’
‘Good. Then I’ll do it.’
After that Amy had rung for coffee and they had taken the port decanter up to Adeline’s white drawing room. In the doorway, seeing Nick’s raised eyebrows, Amy had said hastily, ‘No, not in here. Come up to the old schoolroom.’
Nick carried up the tray and Amy brought in an electric fire and stood it in the hearth where she and Isabel had so often sat over the fire on wet London afternoons. A big, sagging sofa with a chintz cover was drawn up in front of it, and behind that was the double desk where they had sat to do their French translations before going to Miss Abbott’s.
‘Didn’t you go to school?’ Nick asked from the depths of the sofa. Amy spun the old wooden globe on its stand.
‘Not until I was fourteen. We had governesses until then. And the school we went to in the end concentrated on teaching us Court curtseys and where to place duchesses at dinner. I’ve always felt rather uneducated, and jealous of Richard at Eton.’
Leaving the globe still spinning, she crossed to the tray and filled the two port glasses. She had drunk more wine than usual this evening, but it had made her feel warm and comfortable, rather than dizzy and remote as it often did. She gave Nick his glass and curled up in the sofa corner opposite him, kicking off her shoes as she settled back. The schoolroom felt safe, and homely.
‘It’s your turn now,’ she said. ‘Tell me about Nantlas.’
Nick was looking at her. She saw the colour of his eyes again and thought that sometimes they looked almost transparent. He lifted his hand as if he was going to reach out and touch her, then let it fall again.
‘Do you know,’ he said quietly, ‘that you have very pretty feet? No, don’t hide them under your dress. I wasn’t going to touch them.’
You can, if you want to, Amy said silently. The lurching awkwardness of the evening, the painful gaps that it had revealed between them and the flimsy structures that they had bridged them with were forgotten for the moment. To Amy, in that instant in the schoolroom, they were equal, and close enough to each other to reach out and touch.
Then Nick was talking again, faster than usual. ‘Nantlas. It was a fine place until ten years ago. It worked, as a community. There was a school, and the master was good enough to make us want to go on learning after we all left for the pit at fourteen. There was a choir, and a pit band, and sports on Saturday afternoons. There were two chapels and enough money to support a minister for both of them. They’re gone, now.’
‘I know.’ Amy was looking away at the hard red bars of the fire. ‘Bethan told me. Her sister had to go to Ferndale to get married in the registry office.’
‘I was at the wedding party,’ Nick said. ‘There was food, and singing and dancing. Almost like the old days.’
Amy sat beside him in her corner of the sofa, following the outlines of the flowers in the chintz with her fingertip and listening, only half-comprehending. The moment of closeness had crept up on her and then receded, so quickly that it was hard to believe it had happened. Nick was talking almost to himself, about the pits that closed one after another, about the system that forced out-of-work miners to walk from pithead to pithead, often covering scores of miles in a week, to get the pit managers’ signatures on a piece of paper. The signatures were proof that they had genuinely been seeking work, so that they could claim the dole money. He talked about the soft company unions that threatened the strength of the miners’ lodges, the only hope that remained of defending their livelihoods.
‘That’s why we march,’ Nick said bitterly. ‘That’s why I believe we can do something if we fight them instead of taking what the companies and the government hand out. It’s less every time; less even than it was in 1918.’
Nick had been talking for a long time. Abruptly he sat upright, frowning. ‘I’m sure all that has bored you to death.’
‘It wasn’t boring,’ Amy said gently. ‘Tell me something. You say that you have to prove that you’ve been looking for work, and that if you can’t you lose your benefit. Won’t you lose yours now?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘What will you do?’
Nick’s frown was black, but he shrugged the question away. ‘I don’t know. Try to find some work. It hasn’t happened yet.’
Amy looked at the fire and then at the familiar chintz flowers, the faded blues and pinks reminding her of summer gardens and the long borders at Chance.
‘If …’ she began slowly, ‘if you needed work badly, there would be something at Chance. I could ask my father, and the estate manager. It’s a big estate. I don’t know exactly what the men do there, but …’
As she saw Nick’s face her voice died in her throat. His eyes had gone completely cold.
‘You’re very gracious,’ he said.
Amy could have bitten out her tongue. Without warning the gulf had opened up again, deeper than ever.
‘Thank you, but no. I’m a miner. I don’t want to join the creeping army of Lovell retainers. And even if I’m out of work I’ve got other things to do in South Wales. As well as a wife and child.’
‘I was thinking of them …’
‘Let me do that. I’m grateful for the dinner and the bed. Even for the kind offer of someone’s penguin suit to dress up in like a gentleman. But it doesn’t give you the right to patronize me. I don’t want charity from you, or people like you.’
His words stung Amy.