A Fragile Peace

  Allie laughed. Around them, morning-suited men and elegantly dressed women enjoyed the White Hart’s excellent sherry and caught up on family gossip, the Jordans grouped at one end of the panelled room, the Mayburys at the other. Libby rolled her eyes.

  ‘We’d better get circulating, darling. They look like armies drawn up for battle. Let’s hope the champers brings them together!’

  It did. By the time the meal was over and the tables had been cleared and pushed back to the sides of the ballroom to make space for an afternoon’s dancing, the most rigidly proper members of the two families were unbending a little.

  Allie found the afternoon flying past her in a whirl of faces to which she could rarely put names and a babble of half-remembered conversations.

  ‘…living in London, I understand? Near one of the parks, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. A lovely little flat, in Rampton Court. Edward’s parents gave it to them as a wedding present…’

  ‘Later, of course, we’ll move to the country…’ this from Libby herself who, glass in hand, had appeared at her sister’s shoulder ‘…and have hundreds of children…’ She drifted away on the laughter that produced.

  ‘…a honeymoon in Paris. How romantic…’

  ‘Allie, Libby’s asking for you – it’s time for her to change. They’ll have to leave very soon or they’ll miss their train.’ Upstairs, in the room set aside for the purpose, Allie helped her sister out of the exquisite wedding dress and laid out the wide-shouldered, tailored travelling suit of navy blue trimmed with white. White shoes, hat and bag completed the chic ensemble.

  With the only sign of strained nerves that she had, to her credit, shown all day, Libby, bending to pull on the high-heeled white shoes, asked irritably, ‘Why does Aunt Alice have to be such a pain?’

  Allie was carefully folding the shining yards of wedding dress. ‘Aunt Alice? What’s she done?’

  ‘She’s spent the entire day – the entire day – talking about some speech that Lady Reading made on the wireless yesterday. Some nonsense about women’s voluntary services for something or other. Civil defence or ARP or washing up or something. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Not on my wedding day, ad nauseam. She’s been damned well recruiting out there! On my wedding day!’

  Allie laughed. ‘If anyone’s asking for volunteers, Aunt Alice will volunteer, you can depend on it. If the devil himself asked for volunteers Aunt Alice wouldn’t be able to resist rolling up her sleeves and falling in line.’

  ‘She’d probably find Mother there ahead of her.’ The two girls exploded into laughter.

  Allie smoothed the ivory satin and laid the dress in its box. ‘Doesn’t it seem a shame that you’ll only wear this once? It’s so very beautiful…’

  ‘I shall keep it for ever,’ Libby said, ‘and I shall wear it for Edward on our golden wedding anniversary. See if I don’t.’

  The send-off, from the steps of the hotel, was riotous. The hired car that was to take them to the station had been festooned in streamers and balloons. A dustbin-load of tins and old boots and shoes had been attached to the back. The air as the young couple fled, laughing, down the steps to the car was a blizzard of confetti and rice. As amidst cheers and a great deal of champagne-induced last-minute advice to Edward the car pulled away and turned the corner, Allie slipped back into the almost-empty ballroom and dropped into a chair by a table that stood close to the little stage upon which a five-piece band still manfully played.

  ‘You look as if you’ve had a hard day?’

  She looked up. The smiling young man who stood above her looked vaguely familiar. ‘Yes I have, to tell the truth. I didn’t realize that being a bridesmaid would turn out to be such hard work!’ She searched her memory, but could not even begin to place him. He was tall, with brownish-fair hair and an unremarkable but pleasant face to which a small blond moustache added character. His eyes were that mixture of brown and green called hazel and very clear and kindly.

  He divined the reason for her confusion at once. ‘Peter Wickham,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, of course…’ She extended her hand. ‘We met at Libby’s twenty-first. I never ever thanked you for rescuing me from the awful Arthur.’

  ‘Is that what I did?’

  She nodded, her smile a little less ready. Of all things, today, she did not want to be reminded of that other celebration. Yet, perversely, she found herself saying, ‘You came with Celia Hinton, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. Celia and I are old friends – practically grew up together in fact. Our parents have been chums from way back – Edward’s too.’

  ‘Why, of course, Edward was with you that night, wasn’t he? Well – how does it feel to be responsible for all this?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly.’ When he smiled his eyes crinkled engagingly. ‘From the look of those two, that marriage was made in heaven. If I hadn’t been instrumental in bringing them together, something or someone else would have. May I join you?’ He drew out a chair and stood looking at her in polite enquiry.

  ‘Oh, of course. I’m sorry.’

  He sat down, indicated the band with a nod of his head. ‘They’re jolly good, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, they are.’ The room was filling now as people drifted back from the send-off, and two or three couples were dancing. There was a short, slightly uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Do you—’

  ‘Have you—’ They both spoke at once, stopped, laughed.

  ‘After you,’ Allie said. ‘I think you beat me by half a syllable.’

  ‘I was just going to ask if you’d heard from Celia lately?’

  She might have expected it, but she had not. She felt her face stiffen. Peter was watching the band, his hand tapping out the rhythm on the table top.

  ‘I – well, yes. Libby has, that is. And Sir Brian. I get the news from them. Celia sent Libby and Edward a rather splendid modern silver fruit bowl for a wedding present. It’s a lovely thing.’ She thought that he must hear the desperate distaste that she could not keep from her voice, but it seemed that he did not.

  ‘I had a letter. She seems to be making a go of it, doesn’t she? But then, I can’t imagine old Celia not getting what she wants in the end, can you?’

  Her tongue finally gave out on her. She looked at him in silence, her face wooden. He turned, smiling in question, waiting for a response.

  ‘I’m sorry? I didn’t catch what you said.’

  ‘I said – oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter. I say, I’ve just remembered – you work for Sir Brian, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Full time now that Celia’s gone.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes. Very much.’

  ‘The business must be a bit dicey, I should think, with all the trouble in Europe?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s all right at the moment, but if anything should happen…’

  He was sober for a moment. ‘It’s a damn shame. The business means a lot to the old man, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You know him well?’

  ‘I should say so.’ He grinned, boyishly. ‘He’s my godfather. I’ll never forget the day he caught Celia and me in his cellar at the vintage port. We must have been about eight at the time. I couldn’t sit down for a week!’

  She laughed, briefly.

  Head on one side, he extended a square, rather bony hand. ‘Would you like to dance?’

  Relief that the awkward subject was past overcame her tiredness. ‘I’d love to.’

  He was, as she remembered, an extremely good dancer. His hands were cool, his smile pleasant and he smelled, faintly and agreeably, of soap and hair cream. As before, he did not attempt to make forced conversation, but their silence was natural and completely unstrained. By the time they returned to the table several dances later, Allie was surprised to realize that an easy mood of friendliness had grown between them. Pots of tea and small plates of biscuits, cakes and sweetmeats had been placed on the tables.

 
‘Marzipan! Lovely! I adore marzipan…’

  He watched with some amusement as she poked with almost childlike pleasure among the marzipan fruits. ‘Aren’t they pretty? Almost too good to eat. Look at these.’ She lifted on a long, narrow palm two minutely perfect, rosy apples complete with stems and leaves and held them out to him. ‘Would you like one?’

  He laughed as he took one. ‘There’s progress for you.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The modern Eve. She has two apples – one to offer and one to keep.’

  ‘Very sensible.’ She nibbled at a marzipan leaf, smiling mischievously. ‘Actually, I think someone made a bad mistake with that particular story,’ she added.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, isn’t it supposed to illustrate Adam’s rectitude and poor Eve’s female weakness?’

  ‘I suppose it is, yes.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it does that. But if you ask me, it makes Adam look a terrible nincompoop on the way, doesn’t it? I mean – compare their two excuses…’ Enjoying herself, she rested her chin on her hand and waited a moment before continuing. ‘Eve, all wide eyes and fluttering lashes – I’m sure she’d have found out how to do that by then – says, “Lord, I truly can’t imagine how it happened; you see, this magical, fascinating, terrifying serpent slithered from his lair and hid in Your garden to tempt me” – while all Adam could manage was “It wasn’t my fault, Lord. She made me do it.” If you’re going to tell a story, I always say, then at least make it a good one!’

  ‘If I were the Lord, I know which story I’d have believed.’

  ‘And if I were, I know which one I’d have enjoyed most.’

  He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. Pleased with her success Allie popped the sweet into her mouth and chewed it, grinning.

  They danced again, several times, and in between they chatted like old friends. Peter’s parents, Allie discovered, had recently moved to the nearby village of Watersfield; Peter, who worked for a merchant bank, lived in rooms in London during the week but would be spending most weekends in Kent.

  ‘Do you play tennis?’ Allie asked.

  ‘Yes, I do, actually.’

  ‘Marvellous. I’ll get Daddy to put you up for the club if you’d like. We could have a few games – that is, if you’d like to, of course?’ She was suddenly acutely embarrassed. In the short time they had spent together, a kind of camaraderie had grown between them that had nothing whatever in common with the wary, sharply flirtatious contests that Allie had grown used to with most of the boys she knew. Peter was friendly, intelligent and good company. Physically, he did not particularly attract her. Only as she spoke had she realized the interpretation that might be put on her impulsive and, she supposed, rather forward suggestion. Young ladies simply did not make such advances at first meeting. She blushed furiously. ‘I didn’t mean—’ she stammered.

  ‘That would be really marvellous. And very kind. Thank you. I don’t know this area very well – most of my friends are in London. Or getting married,’ he added with his engaging smile. ‘The tennis club would be super. And while we’re on the subject, you don’t know of a decent local stables, do you?’

  Relieved that the difficult moment was past, she nodded. ‘The one on Brent Hill’s best. Mrs Matthews. I learned there when I was little.’

  ‘Splendid.’ He looked up sharply, then smiling he pushed his chair back and stood up, looking over Allie’s head. Allie turned to find her mother standing behind her.

  ‘Allie, darling, it’s nearly time to go. A few people are coming back to the house…’ Myra paused, smiling at Peter, waiting.

  ‘Oh – Mother, this is Peter Wickham, remember? Edward’s friend. He was at Libby’s twenty-first.’

  ‘Ah, of course. Forgive me, Mr Wickham.’ Myra extended a white-gloved hand. ‘Would you care to come back to Ashdown for a drink?’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Jordan, but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve already made arrangements for the evening.’

  ‘What a pity. Never mind. Another time, perhaps? Allie?’ Myra looked expectantly at her daughter.

  ‘Coming, Mother.’ Allie, too, extended her hand to Peter Wickham. ‘It’s been really nice meeting you again,’ she said candidly.

  ‘The pleasure’s mine. And I’ll take you up on the tennis club, if I might?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll speak to Daddy. If you’d like to ring in a week or so we can make some arrangements.’

  ‘Splendid. Thank you. —Oh – wait a sec,’ he called her back as she turned to go. ‘You’ve forgotten something.’ He reached into the depleted bowl of sweets and extracted the last, tiny apple. She held out her hand and he dropped it into her palm. ‘First prize in the story-telling contest,’ he said solemnly.

  On the way across the dance floor, their heels clicking sharply upon the highly polished boards, mother eyed daughter a little slyly. ‘Mr Wickham seems an extremely nice young man.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Will we be seeing him again, do you think?’

  Half-irritated, Allie glanced at her. ‘Mother, honestly—’ She caught, in time, the twinkle of good-tempered fun in her mother’s eye. She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

  Chapter Eight

  It afterwards seemed to Allie that her sister’s wedding was the last event in their lives to be untouched by the possibility – or rather the probability – of a coming war. She knew of course, as did everyone, that the signs had been there long before, yet always she had managed to convince herself that such a thing could not happen. Now, as controversy raged through the country over Hitler’s threat to Czechoslovakia, she found herself, like so many others, scanning the papers for news and opinion, listening with unaccustomed regularity to the BBC’s six o’clock news bulletins, and – again in common with most of Britain – torn between the desire to see her country do the honourable thing and champion a small, helpless nation against the brutal predacity of her Nazi neighbour and terror at the thought of what such a course of action might entail.

  She listened with trepidation to the gloomily confident predictions of what modern warfare would bring: mass air attacks on civilian centres, the possibility – some said the certainty – that in the first weeks of a conflict up to 100,000 tons of bombs could be dropped on London alone, with an estimated fifty casualties to each ton of bombs – this last terrifying figure was widely believed despite the fact that neither casualty rates from the Great War nor, more recently, from Spain bore them out. That there would be no possible way to stop wave after wave of enemy bombers from pounding Britain’s cities to rubble was a widely held belief. ‘The bombers will always get through’ was a phrase that quickly filtered through from the enclaves of Whitehall to the civilian population. There were many to wonder that the world could have come again to such a knife-edge of peril just twenty years after the savage conflict that most supposed to have at last taught the futility of war. During that September of 1938, Allie saw trenches dug in Hyde Park, collected her gas mask from the village hall, joined, with her mother, Lady Reading’s new organization for women, known as the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) and heartily detested the anguished, eldritch wail of the air-raid sirens that were tested not just in London but all over the country. Visiting the small local school with her mother to help in the distribution of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck gas masks, she heard a group of little girls in the playground, skipping and singing cheerfully:

  … Underneath the spreading chestnut tree,

  Neville Chamberlain said to me,

  ‘If you want to get your gas mask free,

  Join the blinkin’ ARP’…

  and reflected that any future historian who took children’s doggerel for reported fact might wrongly assume that any of the population that declined to join the civil defence services would be left to fend for themselves in a gas attack.

  Then at Munich, as the tense month drew to its close, a kind of peace was dearly bought and the conscience of a natio
n twitched a little, blinked and – for a while at least – went thankfully back to sleep. Allie was more than ready to accept Mr Chamberlain’s piece of paper at face value. She was nearly twenty years old and the sun was still shining. In Celia’s absence and with her own self-destructive attempts to punish her father ended, she was beginning to find herself again. And though, in the distance, she could not but be aware that the dogs of war still howled threateningly, she closed her ears to the sound and convinced herself that the crisis was over and that, under the circumstances, to live for the moment was the sanest, perhaps the only, thing to do.

  She saw Peter Wickham several times during that hot August and September. They played tennis together, swam once or twice in his parents’ open-air swimming pool, met for drinks in the village pub. They also, apparently accidentally, bumped into each other from time to time at Libby’s and Edward’s flat in London. By the fourth time, Allie had her doubts as to the nature of these supposedly chance meetings and was beginning strongly to suspect collusion between her mother and her sister, both of whom were delighted at this friendship between Allie and a ‘nice young man’.

  One Friday evening early in October, she dropped in to Rampton Court at her sister’s request to return a book to find that Peter was there and had been invited to supper. She did not, truthfully, put up too much resistance to the idea of making it a foursome, and the evening passed pleasantly light-heartedly. The evening before, Libby and Edward had been to the Adelphi theatre to see, for the third time, Ivor Novello’s popular musical play The Dancing Years. Edward proclaimed dolefully that he felt personally responsible for the play’s enormous financial success.

  ‘I mean – three times! And even that isn’t enough for her!’ He held his head in mock despair. ‘She wants to see it again at Christmas!’

  ‘But it’s such a marvellous thing, darling, you know it is! You love it just as much as I do. Don’t be such an old meany. Peter, aren’t I right?’

  ‘I’m sure you are. But I’m not taking sides between husband and wife. Besides, I haven’t seen it, so I can’t judge.’