A Fragile Peace

  Allie smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course I will.’

  Three weeks later she miscarried. At the time, she was neither surprised nor particularly sorry. As she had said to Sue, the child had never assumed any real identity for her. She was sad, certainly, but this sorrow was the faintest shadow compared to her pain at the loss of Buzz. Her tears had all been shed; there were few left for the scrap of humanity that had been destined never to see the light of day. It was, she discovered, almost a relief in a way. A final ending. And, strangely, as she recovered her physical strength, she recovered too a kind of equilibrium that had eluded her in the months before.

  She lay in bed in her room at Ashdown listening to Rose’s soft country accents and feeling, almost in spite of herself, a returning interest in life, an awareness of a future of which, until now, she had been unable to think. She was alive. The world had not stopped with Buzz’s death. She could face that now. She found herself, at last, talking of him, laughing at recollected idiocies, weeping on occasion, but less often and less bitterly than before. Rose, seated by the bed, her hands always busy with her knitting, wisely listened and encouraged her charge to talk, knowing the balm of shared sorrow. And as autumn crept to the window in reds and golds and the smell of woodsmoke, Allie discovered at last that the keen edge of her pain had dulled, that sometimes an hour might pass when she thought of something other than Buzz and of the child who had not lived.

  She talked to Rose of her childhood, of life at Ashdown before the war. Rose loved the house, treated it with a kind of reverence, polished it and cleaned it with pleasure until it lost its look of neglect and regained its old splendour. Charlie and Stan, she assured Allie when she asked a little worriedly, were more than capable of looking after themselves for a while longer. In her turn, Rose spoke to Allie of a country childhood of fifty years before, of her courtship and marriage, of the hard times and the happy times, of the difficulties of bringing up a family in times of depression. As they had grown, her children had been forced to leave the village for lack of work. Only Alfred, Stan’s father, had stayed on the land – two other sons had emigrated to Canada, a daughter was living in Manchester, married to a mill worker, another had died of diphtheria in childhood. Allie found herself questioning eagerly, truly interested, anxious to learn. Nothing could be further removed from her own secure and happy childhood than Rose’s tale of gruelling hard work for a pittance, of children sharing a pair of shoes, of washing taken in to make ends meet and of sons driven from home in a hopeless search for work. A month before Stan’s mother had died from tuberculosis, the family had been turned out of their tied cottage, and Rose had had to take work as a cleaner to help feed the extra mouths. Allie was astonished at her uncomplicatedly philosophical acceptance of her lot – until now, indeed, had never suspected that the small, kindly woman’s life had been so hard. Again she was struck forcibly by the injustices of a system that perpetuated a divided society, that rewarded wealth and punished penury, and she told Rose as much.

  ‘Why, bless you,’ Rose looked at her in honest astonishment, ‘you sound just like my Charlie, that you do. But it’s always been so. ’Tis the way of things.’

  * * *

  Two of Allie’s first visitors were, surprisingly, Richard and Celia. Allie was lying comfortably on the sofa in the drawing room, a rug across her knees. Watching her visitors, she did not miss Celia’s hand laid lightly on her brother’s arm, nor Richard’s quiet smile, his new air of confidence. After an hour or so, Browning arrived, pedalling laboriously up the drive on his old pushbike, and Richard left to speak to him. The silence, when he had gone, was constrained. Allie sat, hands folded quietly in her lap, waiting. For the first time, it occurred to her that, while she had been hiding here, the world had moved on without her.

  ‘You and Richard?’ she asked at last, bluntly, unable to conceal the distaste that she felt.

  Celia’s face coloured a little. She held Allie’s gaze. ‘I know what it must seem like – what you must think…’

  Allie waited.

  ‘Allie – if you really hate the idea…’

  ‘Of course I hate the idea!’ The words burst from her without volition. She bit her lip. ‘Richard is my brother. My father’s son,’ she said after a moment, more calmly.

  ‘He’s also a man who needs help.’

  ‘We can help him.’

  ‘No. You can’t.’ Celia’s voice was quiet. ‘I don’t know why, but you can’t. I got him out of that hospital. I’ve got him walking and talking like a living man again, instead of some kind of zombie. Allie, he needs me…’

  Allie said nothing.

  ‘And I need him.’ It was said simply, a kind of plea. Allie found suddenly that she could not look into the green eyes.

  ‘I would have thought that you’d had enough of our family.’ A strange, harsh sympathy threaded the words.

  Celia looked down at her clenched hands. ‘If you really can’t stand the idea of Richard and me – if you really hate it –’ she lifted her head ‘– then I’ll finish it. That’s what I came to say. I won’t fight you.’

  Allie stared.

  ‘I mean it.’

  In the kitchen Rose was singing, softly. A door banged.

  ‘What does my father think?’

  She saw the effort the other girl made not to flinch from the blunt question. ‘I don’t know.’ Celia touched a nervous finger to her mouth. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated, and Allie, watching, saw a familiar pain.

  ‘You still love him,’ she said quietly.

  The other girl closed her eyes for a long second. ‘You must have discovered by now that loving isn’t something you can just stop doing. Yes. I still love him.’ She leaned forward, her face intent. ‘But Allie, believe me, that has nothing to do with me and Richard. I swear it. I love him. For himself. I want to help him, make him happy. And it’s working, Allie – look at him – you can surely see it?’ From beyond the door came the sound of men’s voices, Richard’s quick laugh. Celia’s voice had in it an edge of desperation. ‘Allie, I told you I won’t fight you over this. I can’t. I need—’ She stopped.

  ‘My approval?’ The words were faint and disbelieving.

  ‘Your understanding at least.’

  Allie looked at her for a long time, and something in that austere, unhappy face reached into that last dark corner of her being where a child still huddled, hurt and resentful. ‘I understand,’ she said, and to her own astonishment it was true. The child had grown up at last.

  * * *

  Her father came alone to see her, Myra having promised to travel down a day later and stay for a few days. They did not speak of Celia, except indirectly, in relation to Richard, and Allie was astonished at the ease with which they discussed the subject. Celia and Richard had set the date for their wedding. It was to be a quiet affair, with only the family invited. Yet even as they spoke of it, she was aware that this was not the only thing on her father’s mind. But when he spoke of the other reason for his visit she found herself totally unprepared.

  ‘Me?’ she said, looked at him blankly. ‘Join the business?’

  Robert was standing in front of the fire, feet astride, hands behind his back, as she had seen him so often in the past. The weather had turned, suddenly, and a gale-force wind lashed around the house and tossed in the trees, whirling the stripped leaves into the air. ‘Why not?’ His tired, handsome face was serious. ‘You were the one who asked “Why not the manager’s desk?”, remember? Well – here’s your chance. Sam Welton had a heart attack last week. He won’t work again. I need someone to take his place. Someone I can rely on. Someone I can trust. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have.’

  ‘But Richard…?’

  ‘It’s out of the question,’ he said quietly. ‘Richard knows it. I spoke to him of the idea of bringing you in and he approves wholeheartedly. Some time later perhaps we can find him a place in the London office – but there’s no way he could do Sam’s job.’

>   ‘But you think I could?’ The faint stirrings of excitement that accompanied the words surprised her. She had not until now given a thought to the future, would have said just a short time before that she had none.

  ‘I’m certain that you could.’

  She was thoughtfully silent for a moment. ‘Sam Welton. He was industrial relations, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. And damn good he was. It won’t be easy to fill his shoes, believe me. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. There’s trouble stirring in a couple of the plants. I don’t want it to take hold. I need help. Intelligent help. You’re good with people. They talk to you. More important, you listen.’

  She tapped her teeth reflectively with her fingernail. ‘You’re talking of the whole of Jordan Industries? Men, women?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think the men would accept me?’

  ‘That would be up to you, wouldn’t it? You might have a few problems to start with. Would you let that stop you? Allie, I think you’d enjoy it. I think – even more important – that you’d be good at it. The government are keen to encourage women to step into this kind of job. There’s a training scheme…’

  She frowned. ‘You aren’t just being kind? Finding me something to do?’

  His laughter was genuine. ‘My darling, if it were as simple as that, your mother would have been down here long ago with a nice green uniform for you. No. It’s something I’ve been considering for some time. Sam’s illness has just precipitated it, that’s all.’ He came to her, sat beside her. ‘I’m not offering a sinecure. It’ll be damned hard work. Will you have a go?’

  The astonishing feeling of excitement was growing, minute by minute. ‘How long do I have to think about it?’

  ‘A couple of days.’

  She nodded. ‘And, Daddy?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘If I took it – would I be an independent agent? Make my own decisions? Or would I have to keep running to you?’

  He grinned like a boy. ‘Allie darling, you’re going to have your work cut out to stop me from running to you!’

  * * *

  Allie started work at Jordan Industries in December of that year. Six months a widow, her grief had blunted though it had not died, and here she knew was a perfect chance for her to begin a new life, to take responsibility for her own future. Yet even for Allie herself this momentous change in her life was overshadowed by outside events – for this was the month of Pearl Harbor, of a vicious and unprovoked attack upon a neutral nation that was to change the course and conduct of the war and send the waves of battle lapping other shores as the conflict grew to encompass the East.

  A couple of days after America’s entry into the war, the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse were sunk off the coast of Malaya by Japanese aircraft. On Christmas Day Hong Kong fell, and within days Singapore was under siege by the victorious Japanese. Most of Burma was gone; the battle for the Philippines was all but lost. In wickedly cold weather made more brutal by a desperate fuel shortage, Britons watched in dismay, as the eastern reaches of Empire fell, piece by piece, beneath the merciless blade of Japanese domination. The Jordans were by no means exempted from the national misery. In the middle of February 1942, Singapore fell, and upwards of 85,000 British soldiers surrendered to the savage mercies of an untender enemy. Many simply disappeared without trace. Among these last was Captain Edward Maybury, Libby’s husband.

  Part Four

  March 1943

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The winter, Allie thought with sudden and uncharacteristic pessimism, like the interminable, dreary war, was going to go on for ever. The mild, wet, weeping day held no apparent promise of spring, the London street that she surveyed through the wire-reinforced window of her father’s office was shabbily cheerless beneath skies bruised darkly purple by heavy clouds. Across the road the inevitable ruin, fire-scarred and irredeemably ugly, reached skeletal fingers of brickwork and plaster, casualty of a tip-and-run raid. Had there really been a time, she found herself wondering, when London’s streets had been whole and unscarred?

  Behind her the voice of her cousin George, aggrieved and unpleasant, the words clipped in that pseudo-military way that always irritated her – unreasonably, she knew – rattled inexorably on. Where, asked Allie grimly of the leaden skies, are the air-raid sirens now that I need them? She had never found her cousin anything but pompous, self-opinionated and generally disagreeable. He in his turn, she knew, viewed her with an uncompromising and, she readily admitted, probably justifiable dislike and disapproval that had taken root on the day almost twenty years before when – dared by Richard – she had presented him in the garden at Ashdown with a paper bag of toads, which he detested. That enmity had lain dormant until the day that, to his open dismay, she had joined Jordan Industries, which he considered, Allie was sure, to be his own personal domain.

  ‘…the worst kind of sabotage! Shop steward? The man should be in jail! If you remember, Uncle Robert, I tried – God knows I tried – a couple of years ago to—’

  ‘Yes, George, I do remember.’ Allie allowed herself a small smile at the tone of her father’s voice, which clearly indicated that he also remembered the strikes and near-chaos that had attended his nephew’s efforts. Unsurprisingly, the inference went clean over George’s smooth fair head; he barely paused for breath.

  ‘The man’s a rabble-rouser of the worst order. A ruffian. I can quite see why Allie has difficulty in handling him.’ Allie, her back still to the room, took a long, exasperated breath and hung on to the shreds of her temper.

  ‘She—’ George corrected himself stiffly, ‘we – should never have given way over the Smithson compensation claim—’

  That was too much. ‘Good grief, George,’ she said wearily, over her shoulder. ‘Smithson lost the best part of his right hand through—’

  ‘—his own negligence,’ snapped her cousin.

  ‘—through an inadequately guarded cutter.’

  ‘The settlement was too high.’

  Allie turned back to the window. ‘It would have been higher still if MacKenzie had taken it up.’

  ‘Exactly.’ George, to his credit, did his best to keep the satisfaction from his voice. ‘MacKenzie again. It’s as I said – the man’s a saboteur. A Communist agitator. And now this latest…’

  Robert had looked up sharply. ‘A Communist? But – surely – haven’t the Communists changed their tune now that Russia is under attack? I understood that Communist trade unionists were now doing their damndest to work for full production and avoid industrial action?’

  ‘That’s right. They are.’ Allie rubbed at the misted window. ‘But MacKenzie isn’t that kind of Communist. He’s a Trotskyist.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Robert.

  George snorted. ‘What the devil difference does it make what kind of a damned Red he is? He’s a disruptive influence and has caused us nothing but trouble.’

  Allie cast a look at her father; he voiced her thoughts for her: ‘A very great deal of difference, I should have thought,’ he said patiently. ‘I don’t pretend to know the finer points of doctrine – I leave that to Allie – but even I know that Trotsky’s followers are not run-of-the-mill Communists. You can’t bag them all together like same-sized marbles. Allie?’ He looked questioningly at his daughter.

  In her year with Jordan Industries, Allie’s interest in the politics of her fellow-workers had deepened and strengthened, her earlier instinctive but sometimes ill-reasoned ideals now tempered by practical knowledge and experience. And while her own political leanings were by no means extreme, her father knew she would have been at pains to discover the driving force behind the man with whom, as George had pointed out, she found herself so often at odds.

  She nodded. ‘The differences are pretty basic, actually. The Trotskyists believe in world-wide, armed revolution. A kind of constant international class warfare if you like, irrespective of national allegiances. They think
that all wars between nations are wars of capital, and that workers should refuse to fight in them. According to Trotsky, the only true war is between the ruling and the working classes – in other words, I’d guess that he’d say that a German factory worker and a factory worker on Merseyside would have more in common with each other than with – as he would put it – their imperialist bosses.’ She grinned, a little lopsidedly. ‘That, unfortunately, is us, believe it or not. There’s a good deal of conflict at the moment between the Trots and the Communist Party because the Communists, with Russia under attack and bleeding to death at Stalingrad, have suddenly changed their minds about this particular war and have decided that the workers after all should put their backs into turning out as many tanks, guns and planes as it takes to get Hitler off Stalin’s back, apparently regardless of conditions or complaints.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘When we, in desperation and fear of invasion, put forward the same proposition a couple of years ago, of course they called it exploitation of the workers…’

  ‘I still say,’ said George, conveying with irritating clarity that he had not attended a word she had said, ‘that it doesn’t matter what shade of damned Communist he is. He’s a menace. He forced us to spend a small fortune on a deep shelter when the one we had supplied was perfectly adequate…’

  ‘I never saw you use it.’ Allie’s voice was brusque, her colour high. ‘The Coventry workers are as much in the front line as any soldier in this war, George. They’re entitled to protection.’

  ‘Nobody would dispute that. But there’s another thing: having acquired this shelter, how does MacKenzie use it? He treats it as his own personal property – a combination of office and soapbox. He turns every enemy attack into a union meeting. Takes every opportunity to preach sedition—’

  ‘Is that true?’ Robert asked Allie sharply.