A Fragile Peace

  She did as he bid, remained for a moment leaning against the door. Her still-damp hair clung to her head, tousled and untidy.

  ‘Sit down.’

  She crossed the room, forcing her legs to steadiness and keeping her head high. To her mortification, she had, however, less control over her lower lip, which trembled despite all her efforts. She clamped her teeth upon it and looked at her father. He sat behind his desk, his handsome face a stranger’s behind a harsh mask of hurt anger, the angled light throwing brutal shadows beneath his eyes and around the straight, well-shaped mouth that was so like Allie’s own.

  ‘First, I think that I should tell you that before your belated and almost incomprehensible telephone call of an hour ago we had the police of two counties out looking for you.’

  She winced. She had not thought of that. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, knowing the total inadequacy of the words.

  His eyes travelled over her, taking in every detail of her utter disarray. She withstood his regard as best she could.

  ‘Your behaviour tonight,’ he said at last, ‘has been an absolute and to me totally unbelievable disgrace. You have caused disruption and desperate anxiety to those who love you, cold-bloodedly and with intention. You have humiliated your family in front of our guests. You have disappointed me bitterly. Your mother’s feelings I leave you to judge for yourself.’

  She did not speak, could think of nothing to say. The atmosphere of the room was very close. After the chill she had experienced in the car, Allie now endured a rising tide of warmth that prickled her skin uncomfortably and brought a scarlet flush of fire to her cheeks. She slipped the jacket from her shoulders and then immediately, beneath her father’s outraged eyes, wished that she had not. A bright, red-blue bruise showed on one of her shoulders and the right-hand shoulder strap of her dress was broken.

  She looks like a young whore who’s been fighting in the gutter – with difficulty Robert Jordan restrained himself from speaking the thought aloud. He stood abruptly, almost knocking over his chair. ‘I’m waiting for your explanation,’ he said into the heavy silence, ‘if you have one.’

  ‘I—’ Allie stopped and, at last, broke. She bowed her head and, through a blur of tears, looked at the hands that were twisted together in the lap of her ruined dress.

  Relentlessly her father neither moved nor spoke.

  Allie gritted her teeth and forced the tears back. When she lifted her head, her flushed face and bright eyes beneath the mop of damp brown hair were dry. ‘I went to the Ace of Spades with Ray and the others.’

  ‘Against our express wishes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And we had too much to drink. I fell into the swimming pool.’

  ‘You omit to mention that you also lied. To us, to Mrs Welsh, to your Uncle Bertie…’

  ‘Yes. That too.’

  ‘And is that all you have to say?’ His voice was perilously quiet.

  ‘No. Of course not. But I know how stupid it sounds if I say that I’m truly sorry if my behaviour has caused trouble for everyone—’

  ‘Trouble? I should damned well think it has!’ Unable to contain himself her father crashed his hand painfully on the desk in front of him. ‘And if I lay my hands on that young whippersnapper Cheshire, I’ll horsewhip him—’

  ‘No.’ Allie stood up. ‘It wasn’t Ray’s fault. It was mine. Take your whip to me, Father, if that’s what you feel you must do…’

  At her tone, unstable colour rose in her father’s face. ‘Perhaps that’s exactly what I should do, young lady. Perhaps I should have done it a long time ago.’

  A long time ago you wouldn’t have needed to, and you know it. You must know it. A long time ago there was no Celia. No lies. No pain… She stared at him, daring him, knowing that she had it in her power with a few savage words to revenge herself for these last, hateful months. She opened her mouth.

  ‘Allie, darling—’ His sudden cry forestalled her. ‘In God’s name, what is it? What’s wrong? What’s changed you so?’ The baffled pain in his voice stopped her tongue like a blow. She stared at him dumbly. He came around the desk, stood an arm’s length from her, studying her face as if to read there her thoughts. ‘Have you any idea what we’ve been through tonight? We thought you dead – or lost – or Christ only knows what else. And look at the state of you…’

  ‘I told you,’ she said doggedly, her voice miserably low, ‘I drank too much. I fell into the swimming pool. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was. It all got – muddled…’

  The anger had cleared from her father’s face to leave behind an expression that, to Allie, was infinitely harder to bear. It was a look of perplexed and painful defeat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered again, her shoulders drooping. All at once a dreary exhaustion had her in its grip. She wanted nothing but to lay her swimming head upon a cool, clean pillow and sleep. Already the arid acidity of tomorrow’s hangover was on her tongue. She looked at her father, openly pleading. He sighed.

  ‘You’d better get to bed. We’ll talk again in the morning. I’m afraid, though, that you must be prepared to find your mother less easy to appease than me.’

  She wrapped her arms across her breasts, her fingers biting into her own flesh. The emotional see-saw had tilted again; more than anything she wanted to fling herself into her father’s embrace, sob out her misery. ‘What do you think she’ll do?’ she asked, uncertainly.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He ran a tired hand through his hair. ‘But one thing I’m afraid you must come to terms with. You’ll be starting work with Sir Brian Hinton next month. Your mother is absolutely determined upon it. Now more than ever.’

  ‘No!’ Allie had gone bone-white. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You have no choice, I’m afraid.’ Her father laid a heavy arm across her shoulders. ‘Allie, love, go to bed now. Perhaps tomorrow we can talk? Perhaps, tomorrow, you could bring yourself to tell me what’s happened – what’s worrying you – whatever it is?’

  Blindly she shook her head and walked from beneath his arm out of the room, leaving him looking after her, an unusual brightness in his eyes.

  Chapter Five

  The next few days were truly awful. The household held its breath; even Libby’s usual careless high spirits were muted. Not that Myra raised her voice in anger – far from it. The morning following the party, when she with painful clarity told her daughter what she thought of her behaviour, her tone was cool, quiet and had the cutting edge of a honed razor. She refused absolutely to listen to Allie’s unhappy, stammered apologies, and instead insisted again that Allie take the position offered by Celia’s father.

  ‘Mother – please – I can’t – I don’t want to…’ Unable to explain her real reasons, Allie fell back on childish pleading that simply and understandably strengthened her mother’s resolve. In the end, hopelessly disadvantaged by her desperate desire to make amends and to heal the rift between herself and her mother, Allie found herself obediently sitting at the writing desk in the dining room, grimly writing a polite letter of acceptance.

  The following Sunday morning, she came downstairs to find her sister curled up on the big sofa in the drawing room reading the newspapers. Their parents were still breakfasting. Sunlight shafted through the open windows and the morning was bright with birdsong. Libby, dressed in a pair of silk lounging pyjamas in an attractive shade of lilac that suited her perfectly, looked up and grinned as her sister entered the room.

  ‘Fine morning for a swim,’ she said with friendly malice.

  ‘Don’t be beastly.’ Allie picked up a paper. ‘Anything happening?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ Libby stretched, and yawned. ‘Mussolini’s got the Italian trains running on time – or so they try to tell us, though personally I doubt if God himself could work such a miracle. They’re still trying to figure out what happened to the Hindenburg. The Führer’s made a few more frenzied speeches. Stupid little man. And they’re still b
lowing each other to pieces in Spain, of course. I’m hanged if I can remember what we did for entertainment on a Sunday morning before one half of the world started to hate the other half and Lord Beaverbrook took to reporting it, bless his little heart—’

  ‘Libby!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be such a pain, Allie! Don’t take everything so seriously! I thought you’d seen sense at last. Will there, won’t there, will there, won’t there, will there be a war? And does it matter? If it comes, we won’t survive the first five minutes anyway if you can believe what they say about air raids. So why worry? Why make yourself miserable? Now, if you’re interested in some really important news...?’ She paused, inviting question, her face alight with life and mischief.

  Allie lowered the newspaper behind which she had taken refuge. ‘What is it?’

  Libby sprawled elegantly back on the sofa, crossing lilac-clad legs with a whisper of silk and pointing a long, scarlet-tipped finger. ‘Guess who popped the question last night?’

  ‘Oh, Libby! He didn’t!’

  ‘Oh, Allie, he did! And what’s more – after due consideration of course—’

  ‘You accepted! Of course you did! How absolutely marvellous! I’m so happy for you!’ Allie was across the room and hugging her sister in a second. ‘Mrs Edward Maybury. Sounds super. When’s it to be? Has he spoken to Daddy?’

  ‘He has.’ Her father had come to the door unnoticed and stood, smiling, watching them. ‘And my only reservation was that they should give us time to save up for the occasion! We seem to have had rather a lot of expensive celebrations already lately. Of course…’ he added, innocently, to his elder daughter ‘… if you fancy just a simple ceremony – a quiet affair with just a few close friends, in the tradition of young love…?’

  His laughing glance flicked to Allie and, unable to return his smile even under these circumstances, she looked away, but not quickly enough to miss the baffled flicker of hurt in his eyes. They had hardly spoken since their confrontation in the study.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Daddy darling.’ Libby sprang to him, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘I intend to cost you an absolute fortune! Hundreds of guests, champagne, caviar, the lot. It’s going to be the very best wedding anyone ever had, so there. That awful Jesse Warrington is going to be positively green. Hello, whoever can that be at this time in the morning?’ They had all heard a car on the drive outside. Libby ran to the window. ‘It’s a cab. Who on earth…? Oh!’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, good Lord!’

  Allie moved to her side, craning her neck. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s – it’s Richard!’ Libby was at the door as she squealed the name. ‘Richard!’ she shouted again as she flew to the front door.

  For one inarticulate moment, Allie and her father stared at each other, then they too ran into the hall in time to see Myra and Mrs Welsh come from the kitchen.

  ‘What on earth’s going on? Robert? What’s got into Libby?’ Myra stopped speaking and stood like stone as Libby with a triumphant flourish threw open the front door to reveal the tall, very thin and rather shabby figure who stood on the doorstep. Libby threw herself upon him. He caught her and hugged her to him, while above her shining head, his eyes found and held his mother’s.

  Myra put out a hand to the wall to steady herself. ‘Richard?’ she said, very softly.

  Robert came forward, hand outstretched. ‘Welcome home, son. Welcome home, by God!’

  With Libby still held fast in one arm, Richard extended his free hand to his father who took it fiercely, covering it with both of his. Richard blinked, smiling. Very composedly Myra walked to him and then, as Robert and Libby stepped back she was in his arms, wordless. He rocked her a little, his thin cheek resting on her hair.

  Allie stood watching, transfixed with happiness. Richard lifted his head and looked at her. She saw then, with a shock, the changes that marked his boy’s face – the shadows in the bright eyes, the new, bitter line of his mouth that no smile could disguise. He looked cruelly tired. He released his mother and held out his hands to his young sister. Allie took them in her own, fighting back tears as she tilted her head to kiss him. ‘Welcome home,’ she echoed her father, ‘oh, welcome home!’

  She watched him, later, perched on the arm of his mother’s chair and answering the family’s excited questions, and studied the differences in him. His narrow hands were thin and restless; they fidgeted upon the plush arm of the chair, plucked at threads, traced the pattern of flowers, never still. His hair was long and shaggily unkempt. The bones of his face stood out, angular and clear-cut, and his rag-bag clothes hung on his frame like a stick-built scarecrow’s. Yet more disturbing than these obvious physical changes were that awful exhausted shadow in his eyes, the bleak set of his mouth in repose, which could, she supposed, be attributed to his obvious and painful weariness, but which spoke to her of something deeper and more damaging.

  ‘…haven’t slept or eaten properly in something over a week. It’s hard to remember exactly. After Tom caught it, we were in the mountains for a few days trying to patch him up enough to get him out. Then we came through at night, over the passes…’ He stopped, fidgeting a bony hand around his mouth. ‘Luckily, we’d been given an address. Once we got to Bordeaux, we were all right.’

  ‘Tom was wounded?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve just come from him. He’s in hospital in London. He’s going to be all right, thank God.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  He lifted a tired shoulder. ‘Bad enough. But he’s a tough nut, old Tom. It’ll take more than a couple of Fascist bullets to finish him off. Mother, I wanted to ask—’

  ‘And you?’ interrupted Myra, looking hard at him. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘No, Mother, it’s Tom you should thank. He saved my life. Twice. The second time it nearly killed him. He was helping me when he was shot. He could have got clean away, but he wouldn’t leave me.’ He smiled, a travesty of his old, sudden smile. ‘I’ve discovered that I’m not a very good soldier, I’m afraid.’ He hesitated, watching Myra’s face. ‘Mother – they said at the hospital that Tom would be able to come out in a few weeks if he had somewhere to go, somewhere quiet, to recuperate. There’s no way he could afford a nursing home…’

  Myra stiffened. ‘The boy has a home, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Two rooms and a shared bathroom.’ Richard kept his voice very even. ‘He has to sleep in the living room when he’s home. His mother works all day…Mother, please – it would be so much better for him here. He needs someone around to take care of him, to watch him. I know him – if he’s left to his own devices, he’ll undo all the good the doctors have done him. He has to rest—’

  ‘I hardly see myself standing over that particular young man with a shotgun in one hand and a cup of beef tea in the other,’ Myra demurred, wryly.

  ‘Mother, he saved my life.’ He paused. ‘And my sanity once or twice as well.’

  Myra stood up briskly. ‘Well, if you put it like that, then there isn’t much I can say, is there?’ She smiled. ‘Now, you look as if you could do with a week’s sleep yourself. Why don’t you go and have a long, hot bath, while I get Mrs Welsh to cook some bacon and eggs? Everything’s upstairs, just as you left it. We’ve all the time in the world to talk, later.’

  He threw her a grateful look. ‘Thank you.’ He stood up, a little unsteadily. As he reached the door his father cleared his throat and Richard stopped, looking at him.

  ‘I was just wondering – talking of time – how long will you be with us?’ Robert asked the question with some difficulty. Allie held her breath.

  Richard stood for a long moment as if lost in thought, his gaze distant. ‘I’m home for good,’ he said at last, his voice expressionless. ‘I’m not going back. Not ever.’

  As he closed the door quietly he left behind him a silence that was at the same time relieved and oddly anxious.

  *
* *

  In a matter of days it was almost as if Richard had never been away. His mental and physical state improved rapidly; the nervous twitching of his fingers grew less and Mrs Welsh’s cooking soon began to put flesh back onto his bones and to ease the fine-drawn, painful look that had shocked them all in that first moment of homecoming. Yet there could be no denying that, despite his physical recovery, this Richard was a very different one from the boy who had gone to war the year before. For the first few days he spoke very little of his experiences; then, slowly, he relaxed and was able to talk, though often, in mid-sentence, that disturbing, distant look would come into his eyes and he would stop speaking and sit almost as if listening to a sound he alone could hear. He spoke mostly, and with warm affection, of his comrades-in-arms, of their bravery and their humour, of their courage in the face of appalling conditions and in opposition to an enemy far better armed and organized than themselves. Vividly he described street fighting, air raids, ambushes, acts of desperation and of gallantry – but always, Allie noticed, as an observer rather than as a participant. He hardly ever recounted his own experiences but almost always those of someone else – and that someone usually the same person. Allie wondered, rather guiltily, if she were the only one who grew just a little tired of hearing Tom Robinson’s praise so heartfeltly sung. Richard was bitter about the German involvement in Spain and, more savage still, about those on both sides of the struggle, whatever their political beliefs or nationality, whose vicious brutality bred atrocity from atrocity and threatened to bleed an already suffering people to death.

  Allie was appalled at the inference of this. ‘Reprisals? You mean – the Republicans? But, Richard…’

  Richard leaned wearily back in his chair and closed his eyes. ‘Don’t be fooled, Pudding. They’re all as bad as each other, when it comes down to it. Fascist or Republican, with a gun in his hand and hate twisting his guts, there isn’t a jot of difference, one from the other. Men might start off fighting for an ideal, and the ideal might be worth fighting for – it might even be essential to fight for it. But there’s one thing I’ve discovered, and I guess I can’t be the first to find it out: in taking up arms it’s only a strong man that can be sure he isn’t destroying something within himself. His humanity, his conscience – I don’t know. Is anything worth that? When brother murders brother and father, son – what’s left in the end, whatever the rights and reasons in the beginning? Hitler’s Nazis bomb Guernica, Stalin’s Communists slaughter friend and foe alike if it serves their bloody political ends, Spaniard kills Spaniard – and I’m not talking of battles and brave deeds, mind, but of the simple, cold-blooded murder of men, women and children – and sows the seeds of a hatred that could last for ever. And for what?’