Rosie Thomas - The White Dove

Tony was making himself ready for the ordeal of dinner. He had had to go through it a few times before, in Biarritz and at the Lovells’ London house before they all left for France, and they were never comfortable gatherings. Part of the problem was his equivocal position. The tutor was only a family employee, of course, but he was also a gentleman and couldn’t be expected to eat with the servants. He could dine alone, which Tony infinitely preferred to do with a book for company, but there were times like this when his presence was expected.

Tony Hardy was in his first year down from Oxford. His fixed ambition was to work in the publishing business but his father, a regular soldier with a limited income, had no contacts in the book world and Tony had had no luck in pursuing his own. The only suitable employment that Colonel Hardy had been able to suggest apart from the army was a year tutoring the son of Lord Lovell, who was a nodding acquaintance from his club. The tutoring part was easy. Richard Lovell was a clever and interesting boy. It was the rest — being equal but not equal, and living in the tense family atmosphere under its thinly civilized veil that Tony found difficult. Sighing, he rubbed the soap off his face and went to the door with the towel slung around his neck.

Amy Lovell’s vivid face stared back at him.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you’d be undressed.’

‘I’m not undressed,’ he grinned at her. ‘I just haven’t got my shirt on. What’s the matter?’

Amy told him.

‘Mmm. Is there a telephone in your rooms? I haven’t got one here, of course.’

Amy peered past him at the narrow bed heaped with books and clothes. ‘No, I see. Yes, there is a telephone in our sitting room. We’ve never used it. Who would we ring?’

‘Come on, then. It will be easier to do it from somewhere quiet.’

They ran back downstairs. Bethan was sitting stock-still on a sofa with Isabel beside her, holding her hand. Tony glanced at her and said quietly to Amy, ‘You’d better order up something. Some tea, or perhaps a brandy.’ He knelt down in front of Bethan and said, very gently, ‘What’s your father’s name? And your brothers’?’

‘William Jones. David Jones and John Jones.’

‘Right. Now, it may take me a little time to find out for you. It’s after six o’clock, you see, so the normal places one might try might not be open. Do you want to go away somewhere quiet with Isabel while I do it, or would you rather stay here?’

‘I want to stay.’

‘All right. I’m going to begin by talking to a friend of mine, a union organizer. Not in mining, but he’ll know just who will give us the quickest answer.’

Tony spoke rapidly to the operator. His French was faster and much more idiomatic than the girls’ careful schoolroom language. The three faces watched him from the sofa, Bethan’s white one flanked by the intent Lovells.

‘I want to speak to Jake Silverman, please.’

He was through to England. Amy’s hand reached for Bethan’s and held it.

‘Hello, Jake. It’s Tony Hardy.’ Tony explained succinctly what he wanted. The voice at the other end crackled faintly and then there was a long silence. They waited, not moving, until Tony was speaking again and then scribbling something in his notebook.

‘Thanks, Jake. Yes, I hope so too. Soon, I hope. Adios.’

He replaced the receiver and turned to the girls. ‘We are to ring the Miners’ Welfare Institute in Nantlas. I’ve got the number here.’

Bethan was trembling. ‘I should have known that. I just can’t think. I’m so frightened.’

As Tony was talking to the operator again a maid brought in a tray. There were dainty tea-things and an incongruous balloon glass of brandy. Seeing Amy’s anxious face, Bethan took the glass but she stared helplessly at it instead of drinking.

The call to Wales took much longer to put through.

There were long silences, and then sharply repeated instructions from Tony. At last he straightened up and looked at them. ‘It’s ringing,’ he said.

The voice that answered the telephone had exactly the same rising note as Bethan’s but it was a young man’s voice, determined and crisp.

Tony asked his brief question. ‘William, David and John Jones.’ Bethan’s knuckles were so white around the fat brandy glass that Amy was sure it would shatter into fragments.

And then, only a second later, Tony was smiling and nodding and they knew that it was all right. Bethan’s face crumpled and the tears came at last.

‘Thank God,’ she said, ‘thank God, thank God,’ over and over again. Tony held out the receiver to her but she shook her head, unable to move.

‘Thank you,’ he said in her place. ‘We’re very grateful. Yes, I’ll tell her that.’

‘I’m glad for her,’ Nick Penry said in the cramped, stuffy office of the Miners’ Welfare. ‘I’m very glad.’

*

Nick was almost smiling when the call ended, the first hint of a smile for two days. He was taking his duty turn in the little office of the Welfare building. Usually the Welfare and Rest Institute was a cheerful place, Nantlas’ social focus, where miners came to talk and drink at the end of their day’s work, or to borrow books from the well-stocked free library, or to attend union meetings. Today was different. It had been one long succession of statements to be taken, punctuated by visits from white-faced wives and families of the dead men asking for help, and money, and comfort, and all the things that were in short supply in Nantlas. To be able to give someone some good news was a rare moment of relief.

‘There you are,’ Tony said to Bethan. ‘The man I spoke to knows your family. None of them was anywhere near the explosion. He says he’ll tell your mother and father that he’s spoken to you, and promises you that there is nothing to worry about.’

Isabel and Amy were relieved to see that Bethan was almost herself again. She rubbed her face with a handkerchief and straightened her neat skirts.

‘I don’t drink, thank you, Mr Hardy, but I will have a cup of tea. Funny, isn’t it? Now I know they’re safe, I can only think of the other poor men. Before, I couldn’t have cared less who might have been down there with them.’

Amy was shaking her head, amazed and horrified now that her concern for Bethan was past. ‘It’s so terrible. So many men, just to die all at once. Has it ever happened before?’

Bethan said sadly, ‘Oh yes. It happens all the time. It’s a rare miner’s family that hasn’t lost someone. My grandfather was killed, and his brother. It’s black, dangerous, dreadful work. There’s not a man who’d do it if he didn’t have to, or starve.’

Tony looked sympathetically at Bethan, and then at the glowing apricot and pink faces of the Lovell girls. So much difference, he thought. Such a huge, unfair and eternally unbridgeable gulf. And then, irrelevantly, he realized that they would both be beauties. Isabel would be a conventional good-looker, but Amy would be something different, and special. Tony didn’t generally find women interesting but he liked Amy Lovell.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the average death rate for coal miners in this country, over the last few years, works out at about four per day. Every day of the year, that is. If you’re not going to drink that brandy, Bethan, I think I’ll have it.’

They were late down for dinner, but that didn’t matter because everyone else was too, except for Richard.

He was sitting calmly in his place, expressionlessly watching the other diners. His light hair was watered so that it lay flat to his head, and he was buttoned up to the neck in a stiff white collar and a short jacket. Richard’s appearance was completely unexceptional, but there was something in his face, in the set of his mouth and the light in his green eyes, that was an unexpected challenge from a little boy.