A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

  ‘Angry? You were angry?’ His voice was desperately puzzled and sharp with hurt. ‘What kind of reason is that to – to sleep with someone?’

  ‘I can’t explain it. It’s all too involved. For others, as well as myself. I can’t tell you any more.’ Her head was high, her cheeks wet; her quarrel with her father and with Celia was her own, and theirs. She would not, could not, share it. ‘I’m sorry to have hurt you – disappointed you – so. It was the last thing that I wanted. But I had to tell you. I couldn’t bear—’ She hiccoughed a small sob. ‘I thought you had guessed.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve said that. Whatever made you think such a thing?’

  She turned to face him at last. Light fell across her face, glinting on her tears, casting austere shadows about her mouth. ‘Isn’t that why you haven’t asked me to marry you?’

  The silence was stunned. He stared at her. ‘No, Allie,’ he said softly at last, ‘that isn’t the reason I haven’t asked you to marry me. It doesn’t even come near it. It’s very simple really. You don’t love me.’ He touched her wet cheek with a gentle finger. ‘It’s no good my trying to pretend to myself. You – don’t – love me.’ His voice was very calm; only the faintest, tremulous edge betrayed him.

  She gasped. ‘I? I don’t love you? How can you say that? Why do you think that I told you about – about this?’

  ‘Because you think you love me.’

  She bit her lip in anguished perplexity.

  ‘You want to love me,’ he said gently. ‘Possibly, even, in a way do love me. But not enough, and not in the right way. No matter how hard you try. Wanting to love isn’t the same as loving.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She turned away from him and stared into the darkness.

  ‘No.’ The word was a breath, scarcely audible.

  She could not bear the silence. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You are!’

  He did not reply.

  ‘You’re just saying it – thinking it – because of what I just told you.’

  He sighed, shook his head. ‘That has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You mean – you don’t mind?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Yes, I mind. Terribly.’

  She laid her head back, closed her eyes. ‘Do you hate me?’ Her voice was hoarse, clenched against tears.

  For an awful moment she thought that the sound that he made presaged tears. The light sheened in her swinging hair as she moved her head sharply to look at him. The glimmer of his smile in the gloom took her aback. ‘Oh, Allie, you’re still such a child. Of course I don’t hate you. How could I?’

  ‘Very easily I should think.’ Glumly she started to fiddle with the handkerchief again. ‘And I’m not a child,’ she added as a miserable afterthought. Her head thumped. She wanted simply to open the car door and walk away. To be alone. To be quiet. She did not move.

  He reached for her hand, held it still, his own grip warm and comforting. She sniffed disconsolately. ‘Why did you say I don’t love you?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  He sat in silence. Her voice echoed mockingly in her own ears. ‘It isn’t,’ she repeated, and knew, at last, the truth. ‘Why do I always make such a mess of everything?’ she asked bleakly into the darkness and, as he reached for her, turned her face into the sympathetic warmth of his shoulder. The material of his overcoat was rough on her cheek, waking sudden memories of a long-past occasion when her father had carried a sleepy seven-year-old from the car into the house after a birthday trip to the zoo. She drew away from Peter sharply, releasing a long, shaky breath.

  He waited for a moment, then when she did not speak, said softly, ‘Come on now. We’ve both had enough for one night. Indoors with you. I’ll telephone tomorrow.’

  She nodded, climbed tiredly from the car and walked to the front door before turning into his arms. He held her quietly to him. ‘Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  She leaned to him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  His arm tightened about her. With his free hand he took the key from her cold fingers and opened the door. She stepped away from him and into the dimly lit hall.

  ‘Allie?’

  She turned.

  ‘Did you love him very much? The man you made love with?’

  She ducked her head, knowing that this would be the most hurtful of all, yet knowing too that she owed it to them both not to lie. ‘I didn’t love him at all. I don’t think I even liked him.’

  He watched her for a moment, an unguarded line of baffled pain drawn between his brows. Then it was gone. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

  She walked slowly to the stairs, leaned for the moment against the newel post, her hand rubbing unconsciously the smooth-domed carved acorn that crowned it, her eyes empty. She felt battered. Stunned.

  ‘You don’t love me,’ he had said. And she, in good faith, had denied it fervently.

  But standing here in the quiet house, the silence of sleeping darkness beating in her ears, she had to face the dismaying truth.

  She had to face the fact that he was right.

  Chapter Ten

  The summer was glorious. It was as if nature, trying to tempt mankind from the path of destruction, was attempting to balance his blindly perilous appetite for power with a tender strength of her own. As Europe waited in nerve-racking suspense for that inevitable spark that would fire the tinder of war, the sun shone with a special warmth and the days were long and balmy. Many who remembered the summer of 1914 shook their heads at the mirror-image of young people strolling hand in hand in the sunshine while around them the rising winds of international conflict whispered and scurried like the stinking breath of death.

  For Allie, as for most of the population, these were strange months, a time tinged with disbelief, with an air of play-acting. She watched the preparations for war, listened to official warnings and instructions. Petrol would be rationed immediately if hostilities broke out. Places of entertainment would be closed. Rail services would be disrupted…the list was endless, and simply added, so far as she was concerned, to the air of unreality. She simply could not – would not – believe that the unthinkable could actually happen. She saw newspaper advertisements assuring prospective holidaymakers that bookings cancelled because of a national emergency would not have to be paid for. She helped her mother organize groups of small, bewildered children in practice evacuation, took part in civil defence exercises and mock air raids, yet all with a mild sense of absurdity. She could never get used to carrying her gas mask around with her – she found it not only irritatingly inconvenient but strangely embarrassing, as if she were an adult joining in some childish game. The stories of dance halls and picture palaces refusing admittance to people not in possession of one of these monstrous appliances struck her as the final lunacy.

  Far more real to her – at least until that day in August when she, together with the rest of the world, learned of the Soviet Union’s non-aggression pact with Hitler and realized at last that war must be inevitable – was the almost impossible task of repairing the fragile web of her relationship with Peter Wickham. For, as the outside world slipped towards disaster, so her own efforts to ignore the truth that Peter had shown her came to nothing. His clear perception, ironically, had all but destroyed something which her own desperate honesty had not. She was truly fond of him, but she could not deny that she did not love him. And that fact, now acknowledged, stood between them like a wall which neither Peter’s understanding nor her own goodwill could breach.

  In other circumstances, time might have nurtured love from a caring and true friendship, but time was the one thing that they did not have, and as the long hot days followed one upon another, they found themselves slipping from each other as surely as their world was slipping towards war. Though they sti
ll met, their time together was spent usually in the company of others and almost always in an atmosphere of bright and artificial gaiety that deceived neither of them. As time went by, she found herself going to absurd lengths to avoid his close company.

  Libby watched it happen with exasperated disbelief. Her sister, she decided, together with most of the rest of the world, had taken leave of her senses. Peter Wickham was a nice-looking, charming, well-connected young man of whom the whole world approved. Additionally he was kind, generous and, handled right, would make a most amenable husband. What else could Allie possibly want? It really was too bad of her to go her own unpredictable way once again with no thought for the efforts that others had expended on her behalf. She needed, Libby thought, a good shake – as did those ridiculous warmongers who were wishing the world into disaster. That the present crisis could conceivably end in war was a possibility that she absolutely refused to take seriously – an attitude that was still resolutely unshaken the day when she opened her front door to the summons of the bell and stood, stock still and staring, at the slim figure who stood, smiling, on the doormat.

  ‘Celia! Why, what on earth?’ Her shriek echoed down the marble staircase. ‘Well, I just don’t believe it! Why didn’t you let me know?’

  Celia, still smiling, shrugged. She was thinner than ever and looked older. Her tailored suit was severe, her red hair short. ‘I didn’t let anyone know. I didn’t want any arguments. I just came. Are you going to let me in, or do I have to drink gin and tonic on the landing?’

  Libby stepped back, talking excitedly. ‘How long have you got? Are you back on holiday or for good? Oh, Cele, how marvellous to see you!’ Impulsively she flung her arms around her friend’s neck and kissed her.

  Celia advanced into the apartment, her appreciative glance taking in the art deco decor and furniture, the white rugs and bright, modern pictures. ‘Ver-ry nice.’

  Libby grinned. ‘What else did you expect, darling? Now – tell me what you’re doing here – how long you’ve got?’

  Celia, in the act of pulling off her navy blue gloves, turned. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, love. I’m home for the duration. My New York friends think I should be certified. They’re probably right.’

  ‘The duration?’ Libby’s fine brows drew down and her mouth tightened. ‘The duration of what?’

  The other girl cocked her head, an expression of wryly affectionate amusement on her face. ‘Now come on, Lib, it can’t have escaped even you in your ivory tower that there’s going to be a war?’

  Libby turned away. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, not you too! Don’t be ridiculous. There isn’t going to be a war. Mr Chamberlain said so. Even Hitler said so.’

  ‘That was a year ago, love.’ Celia’s green eyes were sympathetic. ‘Don’t you read the newspapers?’

  ‘No, I don’t. And it strikes me that the world might be a bloody sight easier place to live in if no one else did either!’ Libby snapped, her colour high.

  Celia eyed her for a moment, reflectively. ‘You think we can let Poland go the same way as Czechoslovakia?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. It isn’t anything to do with me.’

  ‘Nothing to – Libby, if we don’t stop them now, there’s no knowing what might happen—’

  ‘Shut up, Cele. I tell you, I don’t want to hear.’

  ‘—the Russians have let us down—’

  ‘Celia Hinton, pleased as I am to see you, you can stop right there or go and find your next gin and tonic elsewhere. I mean it. I tell you I don’t want to hear. There’s not going to be a war, and there’s an end to it. I’ve got something far more interesting to talk about. My baby sister is acting the absolute fool again and you’ve simply got to help me make her see sense…’

  * * *

  On the first day of September 1939 a news bulletin put out by the BBC at ten-thirty in the morning told a waiting British public that the dictator had invaded Poland. The blow was not unexpected; the day before, the British government had issued orders for the beginning of the evacuation of children from threatened areas, and – even more significant to a nation whose defenders, traditionally, had been her seafarers – the Fleet had been mobilized.

  It was Friday. Allie had gone to work through a sombre city, and by mid-afternoon the tension was so high that all business dealings had virtually come to a halt. Sir Brian, his worst fears realized and his cherished company likely to be one of the first casualties of war, philosophically suggested that she might as well take the rest of the day off. As she was putting on her jacket, the telephone rang.

  ‘Allie? It’s Peter.’

  ‘Hello.’

  A small silence. ‘Well. Looks as if this is it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wondered – are you by any chance free this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I am. Sir Brian’s just given me the rest of the afternoon off. Libby and Edward are coming down to Ashdown for the weekend, and I’ve made arrangements to travel down with them.’

  ‘I’d – like to see you. Any chance?’

  Her hesitation was only momentary. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Regent’s Park? Usual place?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  He was waiting for her, his jacket off and slung over one shoulder, the ends of his tie hanging from the pocket. Their feet raised dust from the sun-dried park walks. Allie took off her own jacket and hung it over her arm. They walked in silence for a time until Allie said quietly, ‘If it comes to it – will you join up?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Which service?’ It was absurd, this conversation. They were talking as if they were discussing the weather. She wanted to pinch herself.

  ‘I thought the army.’ He shrugged at her swift glance of surprise. ‘Oh, for myself it’d be the RAF if they’d have me. But – well – the old regiment and all that. Dad’s dead set on the Guards. I don’t like to disappoint him. I don’t suppose I’d make a very good flyer, anyway. I’ve got a rotten sense of direction.’

  Her smile was strained.

  ‘It’ll probably be all over before I ever get to fire a gun in anger.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Their feet brushed through short, tinder-dry grass.

  ‘Let’s sit for a minute.’

  They sat down in the shade of a tree, the rush of the traffic coming to them from a distance across the park. Somewhere in the noise, the sound of a newsboy’s call echoed. Barrage balloons, like giant, lazy silver fish, floated above them, shining in the sunlight, mutely peaceful reminders of the terror of Guernica. Not far from Allie, a young couple lay in each other’s arms, oblivious of the world around them. She averted her eyes, picked a blade of grass, shredded it. ‘As I came past the Albion Hotel – you know, the big one on the corner by the office? – there were a whole lot of stretchers being unloaded from a lorry. Metal ones. Khaki-coloured—’ She stopped, tore again nervously at the grass.

  He studied her, his face sombre. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my asking to see you?’

  ‘Mind? Of course not, don’t be silly.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you something.’

  She waited.

  ‘I’ll never forget you. Never.’

  Unexpected tears burned. She blinked. ‘How silly. Of course you won’t. I shan’t give you the chance.’

  He grinned, suddenly and infectiously, his hazel eyes crinkling. ‘I wish that were a promise. But I know it isn’t.’ She opened her mouth, hesitated, shut it again.

  ‘Would you mind if I wrote to you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d love it. Write to home. Mother will forward the letters.’ She caught his brief, questioning look, laughed a little. ‘You needn’t think you’re the only one who’ll be in uniform. Times have changed, my lad. The ladies get to march to war, too, nowadays. Hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘It’s odd.’ He spoke thoughtfully. ‘It hadn’t really occurred to me.’

  ‘You know
me. Accident prone. Leave me to keep the home fires burning and I’d burn the damned house down.’

  He smiled again. ‘What will you join?’

  ‘Anything that’ll have me,’ she responded promptly, ‘anything that doesn’t want me to knit socks or iron battle-dresses, that is. I thought the WAAF. With my colouring I’d look an absolute sight in khaki…’

  An hour later he left her outside Rampton Court. ‘Give my love to Libby and Edward.’

  ‘I will.’ People hurried around them. Sunlight dappled the glinting pavement. On the other side of the road, a party of soldiers was sandbagging a gun emplacement at the edge of the park. The sight shook Allie, suddenly and unexpectedly, from that daze of unreality that had dogged her for weeks. She felt for the first time a sickening rise of fear.

  Peter took her hand. ‘Take care. Take very great care.’ She blinked. ‘I will.’ Perfectly naturally, she moved into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘And you, Peter. Be careful.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘So am I,’ he said, gently. ‘So, I guess, is half the world…’

  ‘Nothing will ever be the same again, will it? Whatever happens, however it all turns out?’

  He did not reply, but held her to him for a moment before, without attempting to kiss her and with no goodbye, he turned and strode into the hurrying crowds.

  Part Three

  Autumn 1940