A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

  ‘Oh, Cele, what nonsense! The fun hasn’t started yet! Besides – why think about going home? Why not stay the night, like you always used—’

  Celia interrupted her, talking just a shade too fast. ‘I can’t. I promised Mummy faithfully I’d be there first thing tomorrow. We’ve guests coming, and you know how flustered she gets. I really mustn’t be late.’

  Libby slipped around the table to hug her affectionately. ‘Another hour? Please? It is supposed to be my party…’ As she spoke, prettily pouting, she looked exactly what she was – a beguilingly charming, spoiled child with neither an uncharitable bone in her body nor a serious thought in her lovely, self-centred head. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to it!’

  Celia smiled, trapped. ‘An hour then. But then I really must go.’ She avoided Robert’s eyes, was unaware of Allie’s.

  Libby caught her hand. ‘Right. Come on – charades. And Celia shall start …’

  Allie sat for a moment longer than the rest as the company, laughing, obediently followed the other two girls to the drawing room. She had watched her father and Celia all night and for her life had been unable to detect anything in the least lover-like between them. On the contrary, if anything it had seemed to her that there was an unusual restraint between them, unmistakable even if apparent only to the eyes of an astute observer. Without volition, the wish became father to the thought. For a moment, with youth’s arrogance, she allowed herself to consider forgiving her father for that betrayal that had poisoned her feelings for him over these past months. She had long ago decided that the whole awful affair was Celia’s fault – it had to be…And if her father had seen the error of his ways…

  The wine she had drunk had blurred the edges of her mind. If it were over, then yes, she would forgive him, and the world of safety, of sanity, of childhood would be restored. It did not occur to her that her father’s greatest crime had been to allow her to glimpse in him the frail and fallible human being beneath the shining armour in which, all her life, she had clothed him, and that the knowledge that she had gained of him in that glimpse would never now change. As she sat at the empty dinner table and listened to the shrieks of hilarity from across the hall, she vowed with a faintly agreeable feeling of self-righteousness that, since her father now regretted his fall from grace, she would forgive him. The utter relief that thought brought with it surprised her; she had not herself realized how desperately and for how long she had been looking for a way to reconciliation.

  ‘Allie? Everyone’s waiting.’ As if summoned by her thoughts, her father stood by the door, a look of enquiry on his face.

  ‘Coming.’ Allie drained her wine and, for the first time in months, gave him an unforced smile. Everything was going to be all right…

  Chapter Six

  It was sheer, miserable chance that took Allie to the garden behind her father’s office the following Wednesday lunchtime. During the morning she had realized that she had left her handbag in her father’s car. It was a bright and beautiful day, golden with sunshine, and the thought of a stroll through the pleasantly bustling West End streets was inviting. Allie was still enough of a country girl to enjoy the atmosphere of London. She found the incessant noise and movement exciting, loved to feel a part of it. She did not bother to telephone her father to say that she was coming – if she missed him then she would simply wait till the evening to retrieve her bag. It was the sunshine that tempted her out; the reclamation of the bag simply directed her footsteps.

  Her father’s office, in a quiet street at the back of Portland Place, was within easy walking distance of New Bond Street, and the route took in some of London’s busiest and most fashionable shopping thoroughfares. She sauntered through the enjoyably warm day, stopping occasionally to gaze at elegantly dressed shop windows displaying the latest styles and fashions. She herself tended towards tailored clothes, but she loved the currently popular softly feminine look, though she knew that it did not suit her as it did her sister. In vain, she had tried to sweep her heavy, waving hair to the top of her head to accommodate one of Libby’s attractive, doll-sized hats, only to have the whole creation slide and tumble down the moment she moved her head. She grinned now at the thought, and the smile stayed on her face as she strolled through Oxford Street in the brilliant sunshine.

  When she reached her destination, it was an impulse that took her down a side street towards the back entrance of the building in which her father’s office was situated. She remembered that behind the building was one of those tiny, gardened squares that add such charm to some parts of London – great trees with the first tints of autumn touching their leaves, shaded walks and neat lawns. There was a little pond where small children gathered to feed the ducks while, outside this tiny oasis of green, beyond fretted iron railings and clipped hedges, the London traffic roared on. Allie slowed her steps on the gravelled path, wandering, hands in pockets, smiling at the pram-pushing nannies, the dog- walkers, the shouting children. Beneath the trees were seats which accommodated old men and women who sat and watched as the world strolled past them, nannies who gossiped as their charges romped noisily around them, lovers who saw no one and nothing but each other.

  One such pair particularly drew her eyes; half-hidden by a screen of still-blooming roses they were so intent upon their own words, their own tight-clasped hands that they were totally unaware of the tall, slim figure who stopped at the sight of them as if she had been struck. Allie saw Celia bow her dark red head, watched sickly as her father reached a hand to the girl’s smooth cheek, tilting her head, forcing her to look at him, the gesture so loving that it made the contrasting revulsion that rose in the watching girl the more unbearably bitter.

  Blindly she turned, hunched against a pain that was almost physical, hating them both with a strength that was like sickness. Then fury rose. She stumbled, almost stopped. She would confront them. She would march up to them, now, and show them up for what they were – a pair of lying, deceitful hypocrites who had forfeited any right to consideration or care. With fierce pleasure she hugged to herself for a moment the thought of their punishment, of the look on their faces when they saw her… The world about her blurred unexpectedly, and she only just prevented herself from knuckling her eyes like a child. Words of desperate protest rose in her mind. Then a sudden, harsh calm steadied her trembling hands and she lifted her head defiantly. To confront the two of them would be to demean herself. Let them play their stupid, destructive games, but let them beware – for unknown to them, the rules had changed and fresh hazards added to the play. Without looking at them again, she turned and walked perfectly steadily back through the wrought-iron gate and out onto the street.

  * * *

  Behind the screen of dying, sweet-smelling roses, the tears that Allie had not been close enough to see slid unchecked down Celia’s face. ‘You have to let me go. Don’t you see it? You have to.’ The words were desperate.

  ‘I know. But I can’t.’

  ‘You love Myra…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Truly love her…’

  ‘Yes. But I love you too.’

  ‘I know that! But don’t you see – the whole thing’s impossible? The world simply doesn’t work that way. Don’t you see what you’re doing to me? I have no one to love but you. I have nothing when I leave you, nowhere to go, no one to turn to, no peace. I’m haunted by the thought that you must hate me when you’re with her—’

  ‘No!’

  She closed her eyes for a moment, her hands fast in his. ‘One day you might.’ She tilted her head tiredly and the sun sheened her wet face. When she spoke again her voice was a little calmer. ‘You know, and I know, that there can be nothing but pain for us. And the possibility of pain for others. Snatched moments, guilt, fear, frustration, shame. Yes. Shame. What basis is that for anything? Sooner or later we will grow to hate each other. I know it. If you didn’t love Myra, if you were unhappy with her, if you wanted to leave her, you know that I would do anything, go anywhere,
face anyone to be with you and damn the consequences. It isn’t that I care what people might say, might think of me. You know that. I care about you. And I care – I have to care – about myself. Send me away, Robert. Please. Send me away.’

  He watched her, mutely, the strength of his hands numbing hers painfully. At last she bowed her head to those clasped hands, resting her cheek on them. ‘Oh, what a mess. What a dreary, horrible mess.’

  * * *

  The little MG buzzed like a clockwork toy along lanes tunnelled by the interlaced branches of beech trees glimmering with the red-gold light of autumn. In the woodlands on either side of the road, squirrels scampered through the crisp carpet of leaves, alarmed by the bright and noisy intruder.

  ‘We thought you’d given up on us, old girl.’ Ray rammed his hand on the horn before taking a tight corner on the wrong side of the road.

  ‘I’ve been busy, that’s all.’ Allie, beside him, lurched against him, laughing loudly as the car swung and straightened. He grinned and laid a long arm across her shoulders. The narrow road twisted left and then right. One-handed, he took the bends with no lessening of his speed. The dappled sunlight sped across them.

  ‘Got any plans for tonight?’

  She shook her head, her headscarf flapping in the wind.

  ‘There’s a party down at Dora’s. Her people are away. Should be quite a do. Coming? All the old gang’ll be there – whoops!’ Horn blaring, another car approached and passed them, swerving out of their way and almost mounting the grass verge as it did so. ‘Silly ass. Some people shouldn’t be allowed on the roads. So – what do you think about tonight? Coming?’

  ‘Love to.’

  ‘What about your pa? Sure he won’t object?’

  That afternoon, just before she had telephoned Ray and suggested that he might take her for a spin, her mother and father had set out for a walk by the river. Allie had watched her father open the garden gate and usher Myra through it, had seen her mother’s smile of thanks, and had turned away as her father had bent and dropped a light kiss on the top of his wife’s fair head. The picture was with her still.

  ‘He won’t object,’ she said grimly, ‘because he won’t get the chance. I shan’t tell him.’

  * * *

  That party was the first of many. In convoy, the cars roared through the country lanes or along the main road into London, their rowdy occupants almost senseless with hilarity, the bottles passed from mouth to mouth, the kissing and cuddling by no means confined to the back seats. At home, as winter drew on, Allie was bright, brittle and absolutely unforthcoming. In company with Ray Cheshire and his friends, she was always the first to start dancing and the last to stop, the instigator of some of their wilder scrapes, and the one most ready to defy good sense in the sacred cause of having a good time.

  She developed a talent for deceit that surprised herself. She lied straightfaced to her parents about where she went and how and with whom she spent her time. In the cause of further freedom, she invented a fictitious girlfriend who lived across the Thames, in Essex, and who, fortuitously, did not possess a telephone. The journey from Essex to Kent being almost impossible for a lone girl at night, visits to this ‘friend’ necessitated staying away all night – and so, the bitter deceptions grew. She discovered very quickly that drink smoothed the road that led from misery to mindless frivolity and, too, made less distasteful Ray’s persistent physical advances. Her reaction to these when sober had her half-convinced that she was, indeed, as she had feared – frigid – and the thought added another layer of unhappiness to the underlying core of her frenetic gaiety. Ray, however, did not seem to notice, indeed appeared well satisfied with their awkward love-play, and so she counterfeited excitement and pleasure to match his own and drank to hide the sham from herself.

  Christmas passed, and her nineteenth birthday approached. At Ashdown, preparations for Libby’s wedding were beginning and were partly responsible for the fact that fewer questions were asked of Allie than might have been. She had been at work now for six months – sometimes, in her more honest moments, she thought that the two or three days a week she spent working for Sir Brian Hinton were the only times of sanity in her life. Determined at first to dislike him for his daughter’s sake, she had to admit to herself that she had grown rather fond of Sir Brian, and he of her. He was a bluff, kindly man for whom the cherished business of selecting and buying the finest wines in Europe was an overwhelming passion rather than a way of earning a living. Allie enjoyed the work, enjoyed the responsibility, found on those days that she helped Sir Brian perhaps the only opportunity she had for being herself, with no need for deception or bravado.

  At home, as the new year moved through bleak winter to the soft birth of spring, her parents, with shaken heads, tended to attribute her changed attitudes to a new-found independence in a world that was becoming noticeably more perilous with each passing week. The news from Europe was like a menacing, if still distant, roll of thunder on a summer’s day. Refugees from Hitler’s Germany – mostly but by no means all Jewish – brought with them stories and warnings that most people preferred not to believe or heed. In March, the Home Secretary appealed for a million men and women to volunteer to train in civil defence in case of war: less than half that number responded to the call. Allie, in common with a lot of other people, stubbornly ignored those things that she did not wish to see, and drank, danced and flirted her way into her twentieth year, telling herself defiantly that she did not give a damn for anything. She was determined to live for the day and for herself; yet, despite the diversions provided by her wild young friends, and despite her own efforts to convince herself otherwise, by the time the cold March weather was fighting the last rearguard action against the strengthening sun of spring, Allie was battling boredom.

  She was bored with dancing, bored with parties, bored with herself, bored, above all, with Ray. Over the past few weeks his attentions had become more urgent, and irritatingly persistent. The – to Allie – ludicrous gropings and squirmings in his small car or in dark corners at parties were more demanding, his reluctant acceptance of her refusals more petulant. He would not, she knew, be put off for much longer. In fairness, and knowing of the casual liaisons in the group around them, Allie knew that his assumption that, sooner or later, she would give herself to him was not unreasonable, but knowing that she had not the slightest intention of doing so, she began to toy with the idea of breaking off the relationship altogether. One Friday night she found herself physically fighting him off, slapping his face in a quick flash of temper, which she regretted the moment it had flared and died. He had refused, sullenly, to accept her apologies and roared off in a tantrum that had almost sent the MG straight into the big oak that stood at the curve of Ashdown’s drive. By the following afternoon she had not heard from him and was uncertain what to do about it. To ring and abjectly apologize for her struggle last night would be to infer that on the next occasion she would behave differently. And that she had no intention of doing. Perhaps, in the long run, it was best to leave things as they were. It had had to come, sooner or later…

  She wandered into the drawing room. The house was very quiet. Her father was in Manchester visiting a small subsidiary of Jordan Industries that made electric motors. Allie’s mouth drew down, bitterly humorous – it had been quite by accident that Sir Brian had innocently mentioned that Celia was spending the weekend with a friend in Lancashire. Libby was staying for a few days with Edward and his family. Richard was home, accompanied inevitably by Tom, on a flying visit to attend the wedding of a Cambridge friend.

  She stood by the window, looking into the garden. There had been a late, surprising fall of snow. It lay across the countryside in a glittering mantle beneath a rose-hued sky. The low, blood-red sun drew elongated, pencilled shadows across the iced-cake smoothness of the lawns. For a fleeting moment Allie saw three laughing children, herself the smallest, racing to be the first to plant their footsteps upon that enticing virgin surface, heard
the shouts, felt the sting of a snowball, the tingle of fingers in soggy, snow-sodden woollen gloves. They had built a snowman one year, she remembered, a champion of a snowman with eyes and nose and a wide, stick mouth. They had filched one of her father’s best hats to put on his head and she herself had sacrificed a favourite bright red scarf. The snowman had stood there for days, the best in the neighbourhood, the very picture of what a snowman should be.

  Abruptly she turned from the window. On a nearby table was a silver tray on which stood a decanter of Madeira and several glasses. Almost without thought she reached for it. She did not hear the door open. Tom’s voice almost made her drop the glass before it reached her lips.

  ‘Bit early for that, isn’t it?’ He stood by the door. In the months since he had returned from Spain, he had regained his health entirely. Again, now, he stood in that oddly arrogant manner that had so infuriated Myra at the garden party, hands in pockets, head tilted. The light eyes which, from a distance, gave the impression of being almost entirely colourless were on the drink in Allie’s hand, and his thin face was unsmiling.

  Very deliberately she tilted the glass and drank. Then she eyed him with undisguised dislike. ‘It would be almost as bad a display of manners as yours for me to tell you to mind your own business,’ she said coolly. ‘So I won’t. You can take it as read.’

  That brought a smile, if a faint one. ‘You’re right, of course. Most ungentlemanly of me to comment upon the drinking habits of a – young lady.’ The pause was just long enough to be mildly insulting. He grinned.

  ‘I thought we agreed, on another occasion, that you were no gentleman?’ Angrily she tossed back the rest of the drink.

  He watched her in apparent admiration. ‘You’re sinking that like an expert. Do you really need it that badly?’