A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

  ‘Oh, I say, that’s putting it a bit strongly, isn’t it?’

  ‘From what I’ve heard, it’s the other French chappie that de Gaulle can’t stand. The Admiral. What’s his name?’

  ‘Muselier,’ said Robert.

  ‘That’s the one. Someone said de Gaulle’s had him arrested or something.’

  ‘God almighty, now I’ve heard it all. We’ve enough trouble fighting bloody Hitler, I’d have thought, without scrapping among ourselves.’

  Buzz grinned, incapable of staying serious for any length of time, and winked at Allie as she handed him the sandwich plate. ‘Well, what else would you expect from the perishing French, free or otherwise?’

  Allie pulled a face at him and turned towards Celia and her flatmate who were sitting a little apart from the others. As she came within earshot of their low-voiced and forceful conversation, however, it was immediately obvious that it was both more heated and more personal than the general argument. She hesitated, unable to move away without drawing attention to herself. Stanton’s square, indefinably unattractive face was dark with anger. ‘I just don’t see why you have to spend so much bloody time with her, that’s all. This brother of hers isn’t dying or anything, is he? For Christ’s sake, why do you have to keep tearing off to see him with her?’

  ‘Stanton, it isn’t any of your business. You don’t own me. If Libby needs me with her—’ Celia’s green eyes flickered as she saw Allie standing close by, and she stopped abruptly.

  Allie proffered the sandwiches, awkwardly. ‘There’s only paste, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No. Thanks.’ The Australian girl was surly, the thanks an afterthought helped along by a furious glance from Celia. She stood up, her movements curiously jerky and violent. ‘’Fraid I’ll have to go,’ she said, shortly, to the room at large.

  ‘Oh.’ Libby was politely surprised. ‘Why – well, of course, if you have to. I’ll go and get your coat.’

  ‘Coming?’ The word was addressed, with an outrageous lack of manners, to the still-seated Celia.

  Celia shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. I’ll see you later.’ Despite her composure, her voice shook a little.

  Stanton, caught by her own impulsiveness, and with Libby standing by holding her uniform greatcoat ready to slip onto her shoulders, muttered something under her breath, glanced around the room in a brief and ill-tempered farewell, and left.

  Celia sighed, studiously avoided Robert’s sympathetic eyes and ate her paste sandwich.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was, at the end of January, one last long week of waiting during which Allie almost convinced herself that the precious leave was never actually going to materialize. She almost superstitiously refused to believe that it could happen until the day when, small suitcase in hand, she at last stood at war-scarred St Pancras station and watched the swarming throngs anxiously as the station clock ticked on with uncharitable precision. Even so, she missed him. The first she knew of his presence was a light arm across her shoulders and that bright, carefree smile. He kissed her, lightly and quickly.

  ‘You are Lobby Lud and I claim my five pounds.’

  ‘You are late. And if one of us has to stand, it’s you.’ As always, the very sight of him lifted her heart.

  In the end, for most of the way, both of them had to stand, uncomfortably, in the packed corridor as the train crept, stopping and starting, through the chill February afternoon northwards into the flat and fertile Midlands. Allie, sensibly dressed in old slacks and jumper, finally with a shrug forgot decorum and sat on the floor, her back against the kitbag of a naval rating who sat nearby, his head on his knees, dead to the world. Buzz, in uniform still, for he had had no time to change, perched on their suitcases as their fellow-travellers pushed, jostled and stepped around them. With the dusk the blackout blinds were secured against the ghostly blue lights and the already confusingly anonymous, ill-lit stations became even harder to identify. Allie, proud of her own forethought, produced spam sandwiches and a flask of tea, which they shared with a mother and her small, fraught child. The little girl, all eyes and pigtails, pecked at the bread like a small bird and resolutely resisted her mother’s efforts to make her say ‘thank you nicely’ to her benefactors. Eventually, in the catch-as-catch-can fracas that occurred at each stop Buzz hauled Allie into a carriage and stuffed her, breathless, into a vacated corner seat, then peered through a crack in the blinds. ‘Unless I’m much mistaken, another couple of stations’ll do it.’

  The town of Kettering, when they alighted, was apparently lifeless and absolutely pitch dark. No traffic disturbed the quiet. A biting wind whipped around corners, skittering in rubbish and long-dead, winter-darkened leaves.

  ‘This way.’ Cheerily Buzz took her hand and led her out of the station into the ice-dark street. ‘Bus station here we come.’

  ‘Are you sure you can find it?’

  ‘With my eyes shut. Do you doubt me, woman?’

  His eyes, Allie reflected, might just as well be shut in the disorientating darkness. She slipped and stumbled beside him, her hand tightly in his, her little suitcase banging her legs, her ears and the skin of her face painfully numb with cold.

  The big bus station was faintly lit. Without question she allowed him to bundle her onto a single-decker bus and subsided in an empty seat, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. She heard Buzz’s cheerful voice, opened one eye as he bounced into the seat beside her. ‘An hour to wait, I’m afraid,’ he said with exasperating good humour, and she closed the eye again.

  An hour and twenty minutes later they were at last on their way, to the accompaniment of a distant sound that Allie recognized all too well. ‘Coventry catching it again by the sound of it,’ said the bus conductor, conversationally, as he took Buzz’s money. ‘Brackworth Village? That’ll be tenpence the two. Be a bit slow, I’m afraid. Daren’t show a light with them buggers about up there…’

  And it was slow. It was also cold and uncomfortable. The bus rattled and bumped like a crazy sideshow at a fair. Yet when, to a cheery goodbye from the conductor and a couple of other passengers, they alighted, Allie felt as if she were leaving home. The bus at least had held some vestige of warmth, some human comfort, whereas Brackworth appeared to be, to all intents and purposes, a deserted village with the wind scouring the one street as if intent upon destruction. Allie’s bones seemed to be frozen together and her nose was running. In the distance, she could still hear that abominable sound that, against all reason, she had thought to leave behind her in London. Planes droned overhead, infinitely menacing.

  ‘The longest mile,’ Buzz said, infuriatingly unimpressed by cold, darkness or foul weather, ‘is the last mile home. Or to be exact the last half mile. Chin up. Nearly there.’

  They stumbled into the bar of the George and Dragon twenty minutes later, windblown, hungry and all but frozen to death. Allie let drop the heavy curtain that shielded the door, keeping the light in and the draughts out, and stared bemusedly at a roaring fire, polished wood and brass that glittered wonderfully in the light of gas mantles, and two enormous dogs that sprawled one each side of the fireplace that was almost as big as the room itself. The bar was tiny, welcoming and almost empty. As they entered, bringing with them a gust of bitter wind, the only two customers in the place and the plump, handsome woman behind the bar looked up. In a moment the woman was coming towards them, arms outstretched.

  ‘Buzz! You made it! We thought you must have missed the train. The service gets worse every day…’ She bustled to them, gave Buzz a smacking kiss, beamed at Allie. ‘And your young lady! Oh, look at you, you poor thing. You look frozen!’ Her voice rose in a controlled shriek. ‘Pat? Pat – they’re here! Buzz and his young lady. Put the stew back on, would you? Stew and dumplings, my loves, how does that sound?’ She reverted to her normal voice without taking breath; indeed, it seemed to Allie that she had perfected the art of speaking without drawing breath. ‘Come in, come in. Get yourselves sat by the fire. My, my, jus
t look at you, Buzz Webster! I can never see you without remembering you, knee-high, scrumping my apples. George, Albert – you remember young Buzz Webster, don’t you? Spent most of his time here in the village as a lad, up there with Miss Wimbush?’

  George and Albert did indeed remember young Buzz Webster. Dazedly Allie smiled as her hostess, whose name, improbably, was Abigail, swept her to the fireside. The warmth and the light first dazzled and then almost stupefied her. By the time Pat, Abigail’s diminutive and apparently voiceless husband, had appeared with two enormous plates of the most appetizing stew Allie had ever tasted, watched with evident satisfaction as they tucked it away and then went off in search of another plateful for Buzz, she had reached the end of her tether.

  ‘I’m sorry – I’m just so tired – do you think I might…?’

  ‘Oh, but of course, my love, you must be exhausted. Come along, and I’ll show you your room. I put a brick in the bed an hour ago – it should be nice and snug by now.’ To Allie’s astonishment Abigail reached for and lit a candle in a small enamel candlestick that stood on a shelf by the door, smiling at her guest’s undisguised surprise. ‘Didn’t Buzz warn you that this was the back of beyond? The electricity was just about to be laid on when Mr Hitler started his tricks; now it looks as if we’re stuck for the duration – gas downstairs, candles up. It’s not so bad once you get used to it. Just remember to put it out before you go to sleep. Now come along and let’s get you to bed. You look dead on your feet.’

  Allie sent a fleeting smile in Buzz’s direction. He was watching her with that expression in his eyes that made her want to ignore onlookers and fling her arms around him, and she knew with certainty that he knew it. They looked at each other for a long moment, and even Abigail fell silent, smiling.

  ‘’Night, love,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’

  And in a strange bed that smelled of lavender, faint, fusty rose-petals and blowy washdays, warmed by a heated brick wrapped in a pillowcase and lulled by the wind that battered at shutters that stood like sentinels between the cosy room and the wild February night, she slept well indeed.

  She awoke to a gleam of pale sunlight through the crack of the shutters, the cheep of a bird, and absolute, incredible peace. She had forgotten that such peace existed. Pre-war peace. No engines. No traffic. No sound at all except, faintly, downstairs, the rattle of crockery, a voice lifted softly in song and, beyond the window, the cheeky sparrow-cheep and the sound of leaves in a gentler wind than she remembered from the night before. She lay for a moment, unwilling to move, sunk deep in the feather mattress, warm as a newborn babe, the undisturbed bedclothes witness to a night’s sleep that had been like death. Then a dog barked, a rumbling sound, low and friendly, and a voice she would have recognized anywhere said, ‘Hello, old boy. Coming for a walk, eh? Coming?’

  She slipped from the bed and crossed the cold room to the window. By the time she had opened it and pushed back the shutters, Buzz was on his way, swinging down the road that led between bare hedgerows that edged dark, neatly ploughed fields, with the two enormous dogs from the pub bounding at his side. He was wearing a heavy sports jacket and corduroy trousers: it was, Allie realized with a start, the first time she had seen him out of uniform. She watched as he bent, picked up a stick and hurled it, spinning, for the dogs to chase. The air that gusted into the room was fresh and invigorating; clouds scudded across the pale eggshell of the winter sky; the greens and browns of the flat, rich countryside were as much a balm as was the silence and the songs of the birds. With no more thought of sleep, she turned to the washstand and its bowl of cold water.

  When Buzz came back from his walk, she was in the big kitchen, sitting at a vast, scrubbed pine table tucking into toast and – unbelievably – two new-laid eggs.

  He ruffled her hair. ‘Hello, sleepyhead. Thought you’d decided to take to your bed for a week!’

  She gave him a toasty smile. The dogs bounded to her, sat panting one each side of her chair, tongues lolling in happy expectation of titbits.

  ‘Now, you – Bogey! Gable! Come away from there!’

  Abigail scolded from the scullery. The dogs took no notice whatsoever, but continued to watch Allie with velvet, begging eyes. There came the sound of a spoon rattling in a dish. With one concerted bound that threatened to wreck the kitchen, they were gone, following the noise. ‘Thought that’d shift you,’ said Abigail with wicked satisfaction, and shut the door.

  Allie looked at Buzz. ‘Bogey? Gable? Are those their names?’

  He nodded, grinning.

  ‘What strange…oh, no!’

  He laughed outright. ‘Oh, yes. Abbie’s a great film fan. Bogart and Gable are her heroes.’ He paused, touched her hair lightly. ‘Who’s yours?’

  She turned back composedly to her eggs. ‘I’ve always rather fancied Lawrence of Arabia myself.’ She almost lost a precious spoonful of egg as he tugged her hair harder than she had expected.

  Later in the morning, wrapped against the weather, they walked through the deserted lanes towards the outskirts of the village. Bogey and Gable, to their disgust and Allie’s mild disappointment, had been left behind. ‘We’ll take them out later,’ Buzz had said, positively. ‘They can’t come with us this morning.’

  He led her now over a stile, holding her hand as she jumped down beside him, and, still hand in hand, they strolled through a small, winter-bare wood that smelled wonderfully of leaf-mould and new growth. Already a faint young haze of green foretold the spring. Something scurried almost from beneath their feet into the barbed-wire tangles of last year’s brambles. They jumped a small, muddy stream, climbed the gently sloping path up to where light and the pale, bright wash of sky showed open land ahead.

  ‘Oh, Buzz – look!’ Allie, careless of the muddy ground, crouched and parted the grass and eaves with her finger. The drooping, delicate flower bowed its head like a shy and graceful girl. ‘A snowdrop! Isn’t it beautiful?’ When he did not reply she tossed the windblown hair from her eyes and looked up.

  He was looking not at the flower, but at her. ‘Very.’

  She touched the petals gently with her fingers, then brushed the grass carefully back over it and stood up. In silence they walked through the breeze-stirred woodland until they came to another stile that took the little path away from the trees to skirt a wide field that was already misted with the tender green of winter wheat. Perched on the stile, looking across to the distant roofs of the village, an arm across Buzz’s shoulders, Allie at last asked the question that had been unspoken on her tongue all morning. ‘What were you going to tell me?’

  ‘Tell you?’ His eyes were innocent.

  ‘Tell me. You said that Northamptonshire was a good place for telling people things. Well, here we are. This is Northamptonshire, isn’t it?’

  He looked around. ‘Do you know, I do believe you’re right.’

  ‘Well?’

  He shrugged. ‘It isn’t all that important. Are you sure you want to know? I mean – you aren’t in a hurry, or anything?’ She took a moment to consider. ‘I guess I can spare a few minutes. If you’re quick.’

  He leaned against the stile, his head tilted back to look at her, the keen-edged wind ruffling his mop of hair. ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘very much indeed.’

  She touched his cold face, ran a gentle finger from his cheek to the line of his mouth, traced it lightly before bending to kiss him beneath a sky that sang with light. ‘You mean,’ she asked, breathlessly, a long, long time later, ‘that you dragged me all the way here just to tell me that?’

  He pulled her down to stand beside him, wrapped his arms around her and leaned his cheek against her tangled hair. ‘Mm-hmm. Pretty grim of me, eh?’

  ‘Pretty.’

  ‘And now, there’s someone I want you to meet.’ He stepped away from her, caught her hand.

  She pulled back. ‘Oh, no you don’t. You just hang on a minute. You might not have had anything very important to tell me, but that doesn’t mean that what I�
�ve got to say to you isn’t important.’

  He feigned happy disinterest. ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘I love you,’ she said, ‘much, much, much more than you love me—’

  His bear hug and kiss took every ounce of breath from her body. ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he said sternly, as he released her at last, laughing. ‘Never challenge a Webster!’

  Like children they ran, calling and laughing, through the cold and lovely countryside. He showed her a pond, dark and dangerous-looking now, where he had swum every summer as a child. She peered into the hollowed oak where a Red Indian had camped with tomahawk and scalping knife, saw his initials carved into the wooden handrail of a small bridge beneath which the water tumbled and swirled, ice-cold and silver-dark.

  ‘…But where did you actually live?’

  ‘I thought you knew? In India.’

  ‘India? No, I didn’t know.’ There was so much she didn’t know. She leaned against the rail, watching him, loving him so that it almost stopped her breath.

  ‘Well, that is, Mother and Father lived in India. Pa still does as a matter of fact. The climate didn’t suit me. Nor my mother.’ A faint shadow crossed his face. ‘After she died, Pa decided it’d be best if I stayed in England. I was already at school here, of course – so from the time I was ten or thereabouts I spent all my hols here, with Pa’s old nanny. And that,’ he added, tugging at her hand, ‘is who you’re about to meet. So come onl’

  Bendlowes Cottage was a picture, grey-stoned and ivy-grown with windows like bright, compassionate eyes and a tall chimney from which fragrant smoke drifted to smudge the sky. Allie loved it the moment she saw it. She also, from the minute they entered the cottage gate, understood why the dogs had been barred from the expedition. An enormous and beautiful Persian cat watched them with proprietorial, haughty eyes from the porch. On the small lawn another disdainfully performed her fastidious toilette with a long, pink tongue and did not spare the intruders so much as a glance. Buzz beat a familiar tattoo on the brass knocker of the front door, and the faint lift of apprehension that Allie had experienced as she walked up the path was dispelled immediately as the door opened to reveal a small woman with a cap of soft white hair and bright, clever eyes. ‘Bertie,’ she said, and the single word was a loving greeting. He opened his arms to her, lifted her almost off her feet, swung her round.