A Fragile Peace

  A long time later, she stirred and moved a little way away from him. ‘There’s chicken. And champagne.’

  He lifted his head, loomed over her, his teeth gleaming in the glimmering darkness. ‘Later, woman.’

  Later, they did eat – and Allie thought she had never tasted anything so good. Wrapped in her father’s dressing gown she sat curled into an armchair in front of the fire and picked at her chicken wing with greasy fingers, washing it down with champagne that sparkled on her tongue like sunlight on water.

  ‘We’ll go to France,’ he said, ‘when the war’s over. Down to the south, to one of those little villages that look as if they’ve been there lying in the sun for ever. We’ll take a little house and we’ll stay there for weeks. We’ll smell the lavender and watch the bees and drink nothing but champagne.’ He was sitting on the floor at her feet, his arm across her knee. ‘We’ll sit in the village square and watch the world go by. We’ll live on bread and cheese and pâté de foie…’

  She licked her fingers. ‘…and cold chicken…’

  ‘… and cold chicken, of course.’ He took the plate from her, handed her her refilled glass. ‘Bring it with you.’

  ‘Bring it with me where?’

  ‘To bed, of course. Do you think I married you to sit and watch you eat cold chicken all night?’

  The bedroom was cold, the bed colder. Absurdly shy, she scrambled naked between the sheets, rubbing her goose-bumped skin and huddled, sitting with her knees drawn almost up to her chin, watching him as he undressed. She could see nothing about him that was not perfect; the curve of his back, the muscles that bunched lightly in his slight shoulders as he moved, the set of his head. She slipped a cold hand from beneath the covers and reached for her wineglass. He trapped her hand, raised it to his mouth, nibbled her fingers with sharp teeth. ‘Like I said – later, woman.’

  She giggled and pretended to resist him. He slipped and tumbled on top of her, knocking her flat. They wrestled, tangled in bedclothes, helpless with laughter, stopped as if frozen as the unmistakable lifting wail of a siren came to their ears.

  They lay still for a moment, wrapped in each other’s arms, listening.

  ‘Should we go to the shelter?’

  He brushed her tangled hair from her face with gentle fingers. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘No.’

  His warm mouth touched her forehead, her closed eyes, her lips, her throat. ‘Damn ’em then. Let ’em come.’

  * * *

  Had anyone, Allie often found herself wondering in the ensuing weeks, ever had such a strange start to married life? She sometimes thought, remembering her joke about living in Nan Wimbush’s coal scuttle with the ‘leather bits’, that they might have been better off doing just that. With no home of their own, their brief, snatched meetings – sometimes at Ashdown, conveniently situated between their two stations, sometimes in hotels where Buzz found the knowing looks and raised eyebrows that embarrassed the life from Allie absolutely hilarious – were more like those between illicit lovers than respectable married people. ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Buzz. ‘Who’s respectable?’ And though she could not deny that the situation had about it a certain excitement, a wonderful anticipation and an air of romance, she desperately missed the small things, the everyday, ordinary happiness of a working marriage.

  It showed in the things that she knew of Buzz and in the things she did not. She knew his laughter and his loving; she did not know his sock size or if he liked his eggs cooked for three minutes or four. She knew his courage and his bright, smiling eyes. She did not know his fears or his everyday moods. Their lives were lived in a fragile cage of unreality, almost of pretence; their time together was a permanent honeymoon, a lovers’ tryst haunted by the brutal reality of deadly danger. She longed for the chance to know him, to hold him, still and quiet and safe from the world. She saw him sometimes strung tight as a bow, laughing, talking non-stop, shadows in his eyes. She saw him haggard from lack of sleep, anguished from the loss of a comrade, shaking after a near miss, high with excitement after a successful mission. She woke to find him sweating and tossing beside her, or standing by the bedroom window at Ashdown counting away the hours of the night to the sound of the clock’s chimes, and found it hard not to compare this strange life with that they might have led in another time.

  * * *

  In April the Germans took Greece and the British were forced to retreat to the island of Crete. Allie remembered Crete, and was sad. She had spent a happily remembered holiday there as a child – she could imagine too well what might be in store for the lovely, peaceful island, the cradle of Western civilization, and its people now.

  The bombers came again to London, and in the middle of the month the city suffered a raid as heavy as anything that had gone before. With the Registration for Employment Order coming into force, Libby, to her oft-expressed disgust, found herself reporting to her nearest Employment Exchange to be directed into work that could be properly deemed part of the war effort. To her credit – for they all guessed that, with Libby’s contacts, she could well have avoided it – she accepted the new ruling remarkably philosophically and found herself working for four mornings a week in, of all things, a ‘war nursery’ that cared for the young children of women working in the shops and factories. Her good grace was rewarded. To her own astonishment, she discovered that she liked it, though at first wild horses would not drag the admission from her.

  On Saturday the tenth of May came, unexpectedly, perhaps the worst raid of the Blitz. The bombers pounded London, Liverpool, Coventry and many other cities all night, and the fires blazed savagely. Then incredibly, there was quiet. Nights passed, turning into one week, two. Londoners were oddly jumpy; there was no relief, just tension and a worried distrust of this strange lull. What were the damned Jerries planning now? In the raid of May the tenth, Rampton Court had suffered some damage and Libby had moved to Kensington with her parents while windows were repaired and essential services reconnected.

  When Allie began to suspect, about this time, that she was pregnant, she could not say in honesty that it was entirely an accident. To be sure, they had agreed not to have children until after the war – but there had been times when they had not taken the necessary precautions, almost, she thought, as a challenge to a decision neither of them had really wanted to take. She said nothing to Buzz. She was not certain yet. She would tell him as soon as she was sure – for if she were pregnant, she knew that, within weeks, it would show in her routine monthly health checks and she would have to leave the WAAF. Almost superstitiously, she refused to think of it, to mention it. Buzz, she told herself, had enough on his mind for the moment, and anyway, the time was so early that she could be mistaken. Another month, and if it were confirmed, she would tell him. Meanwhile, ignoring backache, she worked her shifts, lived for the next time she would see Buzz, and tried, with the rest of the country’s population, not to recognize the fact that all the war news appeared to be bad and getting worse, not to suspect that, unless something happened soon, while Britain was left standing alone, disaster could be imminent.

  Chapter Nineteen

  If Celia Hinton had been forced to prophesy the end of her bitter, fragile affair with the unstable Stanton, she might in honesty have guessed that it would finish in violence, and she would have been right. She might also have guessed that the break would come over her friendship with Libby, of whom Stanton, against all reason, was mindlessly jealous. The matter came to a head one afternoon as Celia was getting ready to visit Richard with Libby. In the ensuing, savage row, inevitably, the words that were spoken were harsh and utterly unforgivable. Worse, when the words ran out, Stanton, in an overwhelming flash of rage, struck Celia, backhanded, her knuckle catching the other girl high and painfully on the cheekbone.

  Celia stared at her, trembling with rage and with revulsion. She held herself very straight and still until the other girl stepped back. Then, with neither word nor look, she stepped past her and opene
d the door. As she ran swiftly down the steep and narrow stairway, she heard her name called once, in a miserably fierce, anguished voice.

  She did not look back.

  By the time she reached Rampton Court, she had, at least partially, regained control of herself. Her face throbbed where Stanton had struck her, their angry voices still rang in her head, the words repeated again and again like those on a cracked gramophone record, but she no longer shook and the red rage of anger had left her. Workmen were resandbagging the entrance to the Court as she ran up the steps to Libby’s flat and rang the doorbell. So absorbed was she in her own problems that she did not at first notice the hectic colour in Libby’s face, the shine in her eyes.

  ‘Celia!’ Libby put her hands to her face. ‘Oh, Lord!’

  ‘What do you mean “Oh, Lord”? Libby, you can’t have forgotten?’ Quick exasperation surged through her. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Well, yes – no – that is – Celia, Edward’s coming home! On leave! Two whole weeks!’

  Celia stared. ‘Edward? But, Libby, that’s wonderful news! When?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it – now. Today, or tomorrow. I only got back from Kensington yesterday. The letter was waiting for me. Celia, darling, I’m most terribly sorry – it just drove everything clean out of my head! I can’t possibly go to see Richard today. Supposing Edward came?’ She paused, frowning suddenly. ‘What have you done to your face?’

  Celia put a quick hand to her cheek. ‘Nothing. Blackout accident. Walked into a door. Of course you can’t leave. But Richard’s going to be disappointed if no one turns up, isn’t he?’

  Libby shrugged. ‘To be truthful, I sometimes wonder if he cares one way or another.’

  The thought of turning around and going straight back to Pimlico was not appealing. ‘Nonsense, I’ll go alone. It’s a lovely afternoon. The trip will do me good.’

  * * *

  Richard sat, utterly still, thin, pale, his flawed face lifted and empty, beneath the dappled spread of the huge oak tree in the grounds of the nursing home where he had been for the past weeks. He was dressed in flannels and an open-necked shirt. A stick was propped by his side. He had a patch over his blind eye. Celia, directed to him by a nurse, paused a little way from him, studying him. She sensed that he knew she was there, but he gave no sign.

  ‘Well, hello there.’

  He moved his head. ‘Celia.’

  ‘Right first time.’ She moved closer, so that he could see her clearer. ‘Alone, I’m afraid. Libby couldn’t make it. Edward’s due home on leave.’

  ‘That’s good news.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ She sat on the bench beside him. ‘I like the patch. Very dashing.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’ The word was empty. ‘Thank you,’ he added, with an effort.

  ‘Allie sends her love.’

  ‘How does married life suit her? I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘She’s blooming. And very happy. No one sees that much of her at the moment. She and Buzz grab every moment they can together.’

  ‘Of course.’ Something moved in the damaged face at the mention of Buzz’s name and was gone. ‘Funny, isn’t it? Allie married, I mean? I still think of her as a little girl.’

  ‘It strikes me,’ Celia said, softly, ‘that one of Allie’s problems has been that everyone thinks of her as a little girl.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  The leaves of the tree rustled above them in the early summer breeze. The air was fresh and fragrant. ‘It’s a wonderful day.’

  ‘Is it?’ He caught himself. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Sorry.’

  ‘How’s the leg?’

  He nodded a little. ‘Mended. It’ll be as good as new soon.’

  ‘And – your eye?’

  He lifted a hand to trace the scar that ran across his forehead, and for the first time turned to face her. ‘I can see, though not all that well. They say that this is probably the best I can hope for. The damage to the other eye is irreparable. I suppose I’m lucky at that.’

  They sat quietly for a moment. On the grass by Richard’s feet was a book. Celia bent to pick it up. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. One of the nurses was reading it to me earlier.’

  She flicked through it, found the marked page. ‘Would you like me to carry on?’

  ‘Would you?’ Faint surprise tinged his voice, as if her offer were something extraordinary.

  ‘Of course.’ She ran her eye over the page. ‘The beginning of the chapter?’

  He nodded.

  She cleared her throat and began to read in her attractive, husky voice, a little uncertainly at first but gaining in confidence as she went along: ‘“That fall the snow came very late. We lived in a brown wooden house in the pine trees on the side of the mountain…”’

  He leaned back, listening. The afternoon sun danced and glittered through the leaves of the tree, shimmered on the bright windows of the nursing home in the distance, across the lawns. He touched the patch that covered his blind eye. She glanced up quickly at the movement, then read on. So quiet and still was he that once or twice she wondered if he had fallen asleep, but each time she lifted her eyes, he was watching her, his scarred face intent.

  ‘“…It was like saying goodbye to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”’ She closed the book slowly. ‘How that man can write.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The book lay in her lap. She smoothed the worn cover with her fingers. ‘Richard?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When are you going to get yourself out of here?’

  Silence.

  ‘You could, couldn’t you?’

  He made a small, protesting movement with his head, then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then when?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You have to, sooner or later. You can’t hide here for ever.’

  ‘Hide? What do you mean?’

  The violence of his words startled her. ‘I’m sorry. That was a clumsy way to put it. But, then, it is what you’re doing, isn’t it? Hiding? You have to get out of here and lick it some time, don’t you?’

  He turned his head away. She reached a hand to him. A nurse was approaching, briskly and with purpose. ‘Richard, what is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I—’ He stopped.

  ‘Well, well, young man, so here we are. We still aren’t very sociable, are we? Time for our exercises. Off we go, the doctor’s waiting…’ The nurse smiled, brightly and impersonally from one to the other.

  Richard stood up. Celia reached for his stick, but he stopped her with a gentle word. ‘It’s all right. I can see it.’ He picked it up, hesitated. ‘Celia?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you come to see me again? I mean – just you? Without the others?’

  Celia stood up. Her eyes were on a level with his. ‘Yes, of course. I’d like to.’ She took his hand, kissed his cheek lightly.

  ‘Thank you.’ He smiled very faintly, turned and limped off beside the nurse.

  When Celia got back to Pimlico that evening, it was to find the door locked and bolted against her and her suitcase and bags, roughly packed, stacked on the dark landing. She did not bother even to knock. She remembered, vaguely, telling Allie that she was waiting for a sign from heaven. She shrugged ruefully: this must surely be it. Ignoring the tense, waiting silence from beyond the door, with some difficulty she manhandled her cases down the steep stairs and out onto the street.

  * * *

  A few days after Edward’s homecoming, a happy Libby predictably insisted upon throwing a party to celebrate. Buzz, his squadron down to half-strength, and passes hard to come by, had to leave half-way through the festivities. Allie saw him to the station.

  ‘Take care.’ Always, her last words to him.

  ‘I will. And you. See you Wednesda
y week, at Ashdown, all being well. I’ll let you know the time. Bring your French nightie…’

  She grinned and kissed him, and he was gone. She turned in the summer dusk and walked back to Rampton Court. More certain every day of her pregnancy, she still had not told him.

  ‘Allie, there you are – Buzz gone?’ Edward looked very well – suntanned, lean and handsome, his fair hair bleached almost white. Libby clung to his arm, radiant. She had not wandered more than a foot from his side since he had arrived home.

  ‘Yes, he has. And I’m afraid I’ll have to leave, too, in a couple of hours. I’m on at four – one of the lads has promised to pick me up at the corner at ten. I’ll be dead if I don’t get some sleep.’

  ‘Of course. But come on into the kitchen for a minute. Celia’s arrived. She was asking for you.’

  Celia was sitting on the kitchen table, her legs swinging, an inelegant mug of orange juice in her hand.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’ There was still just the faintest air of restraint in the word. Allie glanced around. Celia shook her head.

  ‘No Stanton. It’s over, kaput.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘It’s all right. You can say it.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘So am I. I think.’ Celia jumped from the table, took her mug to the sink and ran it under the tap. ‘I’m staying with friends at the moment.’ She wiped the mug dry and set it on the table. ‘I saw Richard a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Oh? How is he?’ Allie was aware of a small prickle of guilt. She had not been to see Richard for what seemed ages.

  ‘He’s fine. Walking well, and his good eye is quite strong. They’ve fixed him up with an eye patch. Looks terrific. But…’