A Fragile Peace

  ‘You’re a pilot?’

  ‘Mm. Hurricanes. Best little fighters in the world, bless ’em.’ He wandered to the bottom of the steps, peered up into the garish night. ‘You?’

  ‘Fighter Command. Hawkinge.’

  ‘Lord above, fancy that. Good old Hawkinge. Saved my bacon many a time.’ Hawkinge, so close to the Channel, was often used as an emergency landing field for crippled or damaged aircraft. ‘What’s the name of that pub on the hill there?’

  ‘The Lion.’

  ‘Right.’ He laughed, a quick, infectious sound that drew an answering smile from her. ‘The last time I was in there, a mate of mine – name of Lofty Stanforth – damn near drank the place dry single-handed, then took off across the airfield on my Norton. He’d never ridden a motorbike before in his life. Never saw anything so funny. Pranged it into the side of Number One hangar and finished up in the glasshouse for damaging RAF property. No one seemed to care much about my bike.’ He came back to her, pulled one of the rickety chairs over beside her and sat astride it, leaning his arms on the unstable back. ‘Bit of a hot spot for a girl like you?’ he said softly.

  ‘I like it. Love it. At least I feel as if I’m doing something.’

  He nodded.

  She shivered. In following Richard, she had left her greatcoat behind at Libby’s.

  ‘Good Lord, you’ve no coat. You must be frozen.’ Before she could prevent him, he had jumped up and slipped his own coat from his shoulders.

  ‘Oh, no – please – I couldn’t possibly…’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Here. A reward for protecting me from the spiders.’ He settled the coat, still warm from his body, comfortably around her shoulders.

  ‘Thank you. That’s marvellous.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She watched him as he drew a battered pack of Players from his pocket and extracted a cigarette, shook her head as he looked at her enquiringly. ‘I don’t, thank you.’ The flare of the match, cupped in his hand, lit beneath a thatch of untidy hair a young face that, though unremarkable in feature, was a picture of irrepressible vitality. The wide mouth tilted at the corners as if perpetually on the verge of laughter, his bright eyes, glancing through the draught-swept flame, glimmered with some constant inner amusement. She could not help but smile back.

  ‘Ah. That’s better.’ He exhaled a long, thin stream of blue smoke, which swirled and eddied in the draught. ‘Now, what shall we do to pass the time?’ He glanced, laughing, at Richard. ‘Join the Sleeping Beauty here? Sing? Dance? Or – ’ his eyes came back to her ‘ – get to know each other a little better?’

  She watched him in stillness for a moment, smiling. ‘I think I’d like that.’

  They were still talking a long time later when, with daylight a faint greyness in the ash-darkened skies and with the raid at last easing in its ferocity, Richard stirred, moaned, and with some difficulty sat up. ‘God almighty,’ he said, and clutched his head.

  Allie stopped in mid-sentence, reached to touch his hand. He lifted his head slowly. In the faint light she saw recollection seep like poison into his dulled brain. Saw him stiffen, his mouth tight.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, softly.

  Buzz Webster said nothing. Richard’s eyes moved slowly from one to the other. Colour stained the bright bones of his face. The silence was awkward.

  ‘First prize for making a damned fool of myself, eh?’ Richard asked at last, with difficulty.

  Buzz made an easy, deprecating gesture. ‘Don’t be daft, old man. Happens to the best of us from time to time.’

  ‘Oh?’ Richard’s tone was defensively harsh. ‘When was the last time you went into a blue funk?’

  ‘Richard!’

  Buzz smiled and shook his head. In the last few hours, Allie realized with something of a shock, she had come to like that smile very much indeed. ‘You’ve been dreaming, old man. Touch of the shakes, if you ask me.’ He shrugged happily. ‘You were falling-down drunk, that’s all.’

  ‘And is that,’ asked Allie with interest, her gratitude in her eyes, ‘what happens to you all from time to time?’

  Richard was looking at the young pilot with eyes in which embattled pride vied with bitter uncertainty. In truth, he did not know whether to believe the man’s words or not – he only barely remembered the events of the night. He recalled only the old enemies, terror and despair, the oft-fought battle for sanity in a world run mad. He could not be certain that this time the battle had not been fought in public. His worst suspicions told him that it had and, looking at Allie, the humiliation of it rose, physically bitter, in his throat.

  In the tired, firelit dawn the single note of the all-clear sounded. Wearily Allie stood and stretched. Buzz’s coatsleeves overhung her hands by inches, the shoulders of the coat were half-way down her arms and the hem flapped at her ankles. She caught the spark of friendly laughter in his face, grimaced, put a hand to her disarrayed hair. ‘I must look a terrible sight,’ she said, and blushed stupidly as she said it, furious with herself, willing him to spare her the false compliment she might have been angling for.

  ‘Like something the cat dragged in,’ he agreed soberly. ‘And out again, come to that.’

  She gave a small, explosive shout of laughter. ‘Thanks very much!’

  Something in the tone of their voices roused Richard. His head still thumped horribly, but with his equilibrium somewhat restored, he looked from one to the other. ‘Did I miss something?’

  ‘No, Richard dear, of course not.’ Allie’s voice was suddenly, absurdly, light-hearted. She tugged on his hand, pulling him to his feet, grinning unsympathetically at his exaggerated gesture of pain. ‘Serves you right. You shouldn’t have drunk so much of Libby’s bathtub booze. As for missing anything – well, you missed us putting the world to rights over your snores. Also, several hundred tons of high explosive…’

  ‘…and the odd oil bomb…’ put in Buzz.

  ‘…but apart from that you haven’t missed anything at all.’ Allie stood on tiptoe and kissed her brother lightly on his cheek, her eyes sharp on his face in the growing light. She saw him relax, finally convinced, felt it in his body.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then. I wouldn’t like to think I’d slept through anything important. I’m sorry, did she keep you awake the whole night?’ he asked Buzz with sympathetic concern. ‘I know what a pest she can be.’

  ‘Not at all, old man. Haven’t had so much fun since Guy Fawkes night.’ In the grey dawn light Allie saw suddenly that Buzz’s face was pinched with cold. She quickly slipped the heavy, warm greatcoat from her shoulders. As she helped him into it, his hand as it touched hers was like ice. The night’s growth of beard was tow-coloured, like his hair. He shrugged the coat onto his shoulders and turned. They stood for a quiet moment looking at each other. He reached his cold hand to her and she took it.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ She waited.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll bump into each other again some day?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Disappointment moved in her. She had half-expected – certainly hoped for – more.

  Buzz shook Richard’s hand. “Bye, old chap. Watch that booze. You were really flying there for a while.’

  ‘I will. Thanks for your help.’

  He lifted a cheery hand, climbed the rickety steps and left them. They heard his footsteps scrunching through rubble as he walked away.

  ‘Well,’ Richard said into the silence, ‘that’s that then. Where to from here?’

  Allie blinked, turned her eyes away from the square of strengthening daylight at the door. ‘Libby’s. She probably thinks we’ve been blown limb from limb.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Her brother pulled her arm through his and, a little unsteadily, started up the steps. ‘The state she was in, she probably hasn’t even missed us.’

  * * *

  It was Tom, surprisingly enough, who opened the door. He did not smile. His eyes flicked briefly fro
m one to the other, rested upon Richard’s face. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  Allie, immediately irritated, opened her mouth to snap an answer, then shut it again. She was simply too tired to take on Tom Robinson at this moment. She was very aware of her dishevelled appearance and her temper seemed, from the moment that Buzz Webster had walked into the ruined street, to be getting shorter by the minute.

  ‘My fault,’ Richard said. ‘I dragged Allie out to take her home. We missed the way to the station. Had to take shelter in a cellar.’

  Tom’s expressive eyebrows quirked a little. The Underground station was not fifty yards down the street.

  Allie pushed past him into the hall. ‘Is Libby about?’

  ‘She’s still in bed. Dead to the world, I think.’ The words were utterly casual.

  Allie stopped short and looked at him sharply. The apartment was absolutely quiet. When Tom had opened the door, she had assumed that several of Libby’s guests, stranded by the raid, would still be there. Now, with the early morning light filtering through untidily opened curtains to shine upon the detritus of last night’s party, it became perfectly obvious that everyone else had either left or was still sleeping off over-indulgence in the shelter below.

  And Libby was in bed.

  Tom watched her, his face expressionless, obviously about to offer neither comment nor explanation. The night’s growth of dark beard on his face emphasized the hard line of his mouth.

  Allie took a deep breath. Ridiculously, in the face of the man’s apparently nerveless composure, she felt a surge of embarrassment.

  Richard seemingly noticed nothing. If the possible significance of Tom’s words had reached him, he ignored it. ‘Any hot water? I feel filthy. I’d give my eye teeth for a bath.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘They got a gas main. There’s cold, though. I’ve got a kettle on if you want a wash and shave?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Richard rasped a hand over his chin. ‘That’d certainly help. Mind if I bag the bathroom first?’ he asked Allie.

  ‘Go ahead.’ She knew how short the words sounded.

  As Richard passed him, Tom put a quick hand on his arm. ‘You OK?’

  Richard avoided the other man’s eyes. ‘Sure.’

  Tom withdrew his hand. ‘The water’s in the kitchen. Put the kettle back on when you’ve finished, would you?’ Once again Allie was struck by the easy, proprietary way the words were spoken. She noticed now, through the open doorway of the drawing room, that the room had been half-tidied. Glasses were stacked together on a tray on the big coffee table, ashtrays emptied into a waste-paper basket that stood in the middle of the floor. As Richard left them, Tom, without a word to or a glance at Allie, went back into the room and bent to stack more glasses on the tray.

  Allie followed him, closed the door behind her, stood watching, fighting anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? About Richard?’ She found it an effort to keep her voice low and even; illogically she wanted to scream at him.

  She saw the narrow hand pause for a fraction of a second before reaching for another glass. ‘Tell you? Tell you what?’

  The bathroom door banged. Richard was whistling tunelessly: ‘Yes, sir, that’s my baby…’

  ‘Don’t play games. I was out in that last night. With Richard.’

  ‘Ah.’ He straightened, empty glasses in hand, and regarded her with peaceful eyes.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked again. ‘Or someone? Richard’s suffering from –’ she paused as he watched her unhelpfully, long fingers clinking on the glass ‘– from, I don’t know – some sort of shell shock?’

  ‘We’re all,’ he said softly, ‘suffering from some sort of shell shock. Aren’t we?’

  For the first time, she remembered hearing that, a month before, Tom Robinson had been forced to bail out of a crippled Spitfire twice in one week. She steeled herself against the knowledge. ‘Not like that.’

  ‘He was bad?’

  ‘Yes. He – I’m not sure – he sort of broke down.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Has he been like this long?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘How long?’

  He shrugged. ‘I suppose – since Spain.’

  She stared at him. ‘Since Spain? You mean that he knew – you knew – the state his nerves were in when he joined the RAF? How could you let him? Tom – he was terrified out there. Literally petrified. He – cried.’ She ground the word through gritted teeth, her brother’s humiliation her own before the impassive appraisal of this outsider. ‘He can’t keep flying like this. He can’t. You have to stop him.’

  ‘I?’

  ‘No one else could do it.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘He’ll have a complete breakdown if we don’t stop him. Worse. God only knows what could happen.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Go to his commanding officer. Tell him—’ She knew the crass stupidity of the words as she spoke them.

  Tom very carefully put down the glass he was holding. His eyes were not friendly. ‘You want to destroy your brother entirely? Very well – you go to his CO. You tell him. And may God forgive you, because sure as hell Richard won’t.’

  ‘But we have to do something.’

  ‘Why? Why in God’s name must you always be doing something?’ Because of the quietness of his voice, it took a moment for his anger to filter through. Allie blinked at the thread of violence that drew her skin to goose-bumps. ‘Don’t you see the damage you could do with your interfering? Why can’t you leave a man alone to work out his own salvation? There is nothing that anyone can do for Richard until he asks – can’t you see that? Until he comes to terms with himself and accepts the fact that he needs help. Do you think that’ll be easy for him? Until then there is absolutely nothing that we can do that isn’t likely to rebound on Richard and make things a thousand times worse. For Christ’s sake, girl, you surely can understand that?’ He stood, fierce and taut as a strung wire. Then, as suddenly as it had flared, his temper died. He gave a short, abrasive laugh. ‘For a clever girl you can be as thick as two short planks, you know that?’

  The arrogance took her breath away. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Leave him alone. Just leave him alone. Sooner or later he’ll sort things out for himself. It isn’t up to us.’

  She looked at him for a long, quiet moment. ‘I just hope you’re right.’

  Something flickered in the pale eyes. ‘You think I don’t?’ He picked up the tray, balanced it on one perfectly steady hand. ‘One more thing that may not have occurred to you…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It may be that you – or I – are the last people Richard might eventually turn to. It isn’t always the people that you’re closest to who can help at times like that.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn who he goes to,’ she snapped, ‘as long as he goes to someone.’

  ‘Don’t bank on it.’

  A door opened in the hall outside. ‘Where is everyone?’ Libby’s voice, sleepy, a little petulant.

  ‘Tom?’ Allie’s voice had changed. There was something she had to say and, stupidly, she herself had made it difficult. She had hardly, over the past few minutes, created an atmosphere in which to beg a favour.

  He looked down at her questioningly. Remembering Richard and his hero-worship of the man, she swallowed her own antipathy, and her pride. ‘Look after him as much as you can? Please? At least try to stop him from drinking so much? Whatever you might think, he does listen to you. Please help him, if you can…’

  A straight furrow of anger split his forehead. ‘You think you have to ask?’ he said, brusquely, as Libby, her body sheathed in a nightdress of pale blue satin that emphasized its lovely lines as even nakedness could not have done, wobbled into the room and blinked at them.

  ‘Good heavens. Allie. Where did you spring from?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘God, look at this mess. Tom, darling, save my life with one of those obnox
ious but perfectly wonderful mixtures of yours, would you? I think I’m dying.’

  Wordless, Tom left them. Libby ran distracted fingers through her hair. ‘Whew. What a night!’

  Allie sat down, suddenly and hard, in an armchair. ‘You can say that again,’ she muttered.

  Chapter Fourteen

  During the next couple of weeks Allie became alarmed – and just a little put out – at the number of times that Pilot Officer Buzz Webster crept into her mind. Like a thread of bright laughter in the more sombre fabric of her worries about Richard and the stresses of war, the recollection of his snub-nosed face beneath the mop of tow-coloured hair came to her again and again. She discovered that she could recall each expression, every inflection of his voice. On the day that she turned in response to her name and a touch on her shoulder and found herself looking into an unmistakable pair of laughing eyes, she was in an odd way unsurprised. It was as if she had unconsciously conjured his image, warm and vital, three-dimensional before her. She was standing with Sue and a couple of pilots from 603 Squadron at the bar of the Lion. Around them chatter and laughter rose, almost deafening in the confined space. The warm air was fogged with cigarette smoke.

  ‘Remember me?’

  ‘Of course.’ She did not try to keep the happiness from her voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Here?’ Grinning, he stabbed a finger at the spot where he stood. ‘Looking for you, what else? Here –’ he waved a hand, indicating the larger area of Hawkinge in general ‘– getting the kite patched up. Ran into a spot of bother. Got bounced by a couple of 109s. Poor old lady’s in a bit of a mess. Looks like an all-night job.’