A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

  Allie sighed. ‘All right, George. We’ll go through it again. She is alleged to have entertained men in her room, to have used foul language—’

  ‘Constantly,’ interjected George.

  ‘—and finally to have indulged in a scuffle—’

  ‘A damned free fight!’

  ‘—with another girl in a pub, and arrived back at the Dexters’ rolling drunk.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But she’s never behaved particularly badly at work?’

  George hesitated. ‘Her language is intolerable.’

  ‘George – so is a lot of the men’s. We’ve had this out before. You can’t have one rule for one sex and another for the other. You either sack the men for swearing too, or you sack no one.’

  ‘If we tried that we’d have no workforce left.’ George’s voice was gloomy. Allie almost felt sorry for him. Whatever his faults, he did really believe in his own standards. She pushed from her mind the thought of his probable reaction when he discovered her condition.

  ‘So – you have no complaints about Sheila Brown’s work?’

  ‘No.’ Reluctantly.

  ‘In fact I’ve been told she’s a damned good lathe operator?’

  George did not reply.

  ‘George – you know what I’m going to say. You can’t dismiss a girl because you don’t like the way she behaves outside working hours. Are you going to sack every young man who gets drunk on a Saturday night and picks a fight with his mates?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well, then, you can surely see the problem? MacKenzie jumped on this because he’s out to show that he’ll defend any of his people, regardless of sex. He needs to show it. The girls won’t easily forget that he didn’t give a tinker’s cuss for them until the union at last agreed to let them in. He’s got a lot of ground to make up, a lot of confidence to win. He’s picked the battleground, and I’m telling you that we’ll lose if we fight him. You’ve picked the wrong issue and the wrong time to stand against him.’

  George stood up, wrathfully. ‘I’ve told you before. I’m not being dictated to by some damned Red!’

  Allie shook her head, her hand held pacifyingly up. ‘George, I just don’t believe that it hasn’t occurred to you that there’s a very easy way out of this? You don’t have to sack the girl; just rebillet her. Find a room in a hostel. There must be one somewhere?’

  ‘It isn’t enough. I will not have such behaviour by a Jordan employee. She has to be taught a lesson. They all do.’

  ‘You’ll cause chaos in the works.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘There’s something else. Something I had hoped not to have to bring up. I detest gossip…’

  Allie waited.

  ‘I believe the Brown girl to be pregnant.’

  Strangely, the flat disgust in his voice came as a physical shock. Her stomach churned, queasily, and she stood straighter. ‘Oh? Are you sure?’

  ‘As needs be. It’s all over the works. Apparently she doesn’t even know who the father is.’

  ‘I see.’ Very calmly Allie walked to the door. ‘I have to go. MacKenzie and the girl are waiting in the downstairs office.’

  George’s lips twitched almost into a dry smile. ‘I’d lay money that you’ll learn some words you’ve never heard before.’

  Allie stopped at the door. ‘I have to say it, George. You can’t sack her. Not for this. It isn’t worth it.’ She closed the door on his suddenly frosty face.

  Settled in the other office she regarded the two who stood before her with cool eyes.

  ‘Miss Brown, would you say that your recent behaviour has been – reasonable?’

  The girl watched her sullenly. She was very pretty, petite and slim; the curls that sprang from beneath her turbaned scarf were dark and shining. Allie found herself keeping her eyes carefully upon her rebellious face, fighting the urge to look at her possibly thickening body. She could hardly believe such a pretty elf to be the subversive and unpleasant girl that George had depicted.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What I do in me own time,’ the girl said flatly, ‘is me own bleedin’ business.’

  There was a short silence. Allie looked at MacKenzie. His face was impassive.

  ‘I understand you had a stand-up fight in a pub?’

  The girl’s mouth twitched. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Would you call that ladylike behaviour?’

  ‘Would you call workin’ a lathe for eight hours at a stretch ladylike behaviour, Mrs Webster?’ MacKenzie asked, before the girl could open her mouth.

  The girl smirked. Allie looked long and thoughtfully at her real antagonist.

  ‘Do I detect a change in the wind, Mr MacKenzie?’ she asked pleasantly, and was rewarded by the faintest, defensive flicker in his eyes. She turned back to the girl. ‘Miss Brown, I’m not going to waste time and breath telling you what I think of this kind of behaviour. I will simply say this: Mr Jordan has asked me to tell you that – against his strong personal inclinations – Jordan’s will continue your employment. However –’ she interrupted the triumphant glance that passed between the two, ‘– you will not, of course, be allowed to remain with the Dexters. I shall arrange hostel accommodation for you immediately.’

  ‘No!’ The smile had gone from the pretty face. ‘I ain’t goin’ to no fu—’ She caught MacKenzie’s cold eye. ‘—No bleedin’ ’ostel,’ she finished defiantly.

  Allie stared at her. ‘You don’t honestly expect to be billeted in another private house after this?’

  ‘I’m all right where I am. I ain’t goin’ to no ’ostel.’

  ‘You’ll sleep on the street then,’ Allie said, brusquely, and surprised a flash of something like admiration in MacKenzie’s eyes.

  ‘Them stinkin’ ’ostels is rotten. Can’t call yer life yer own – they run yer ragged wiv rules and fings…’ The girl looked suddenly pathetic, a rebellious child.

  Allie was beyond sympathy. ‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before. You’ve obviously caused a great deal of distress to two kindly people whom I suspect, under other circumstances, would have been good friends to you. They took you in because they wanted to look after you—’

  ‘Oo needs crappy lookin’ after?’ the girl muttered.

  Allie regarded her with undisguised dislike. ‘Clearly not you, Miss Brown. Now, this is my last word. You keep your job – on my terms – or you further this absurd charade and shut down Jordan’s. If you do that then I assure you that my offer, and every detail of this conversation, will be made public. I don’t think Mr MacKenzie would find that a worthwhile exercise.’ She looked at the man, her fingers mentally crossed, by no means as certain as she sounded.

  ‘We’ll accept that, Mrs Webster.’ The girl turned on him, fiercely. He shook his head. ‘You’ve kept your job, lassie.’ His face was hard. ‘An’ that’s all you could expect. Off you go.’

  She glared at him, muttered something that Allie, perhaps fortunately, did not catch but that brought a tinge of blood to MacKenzie’s thin, fair skin, and started for the door.

  ‘Miss Brown.’ Allie’s voice brought her up short. She turned and eyed Allie with hostile sullenness.

  ‘Miss Brown – is there anything else you want to talk about?’ Allie heard the absurd delicacy of the words and despised herself for it.

  ‘No,’ the girl said flatly.

  ‘I’ve heard it said that you’re pregnant?’ Allie saw MacKenzie’s brows lift – not, she was certain, in surprise at the information but at the fact that she possessed it.

  The girl’s attractive face was flaming. ‘So what if I am? No law against it, is there?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Right then. That’s it, innit?’

  ‘You don’t need…?’

  ‘I don’t need anythin’ from you.’

  Allie’s temper almost took her breath away. ‘I’m sure you don’t, Miss Brown. But have you thought of the future? Of what you’re going to do? How you’re going
to live?’ She paused, watching uncertainty warring with suspicion in the other girl’s face. ‘If I could put you in touch with someone – someone who had nothing to do with Jordan’s – a local organization, perhaps – would you accept help from them?’

  The girl considered. ‘Depends,’ she said at last, warily.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. That will be all, Miss Brown.’ As the door shut behind the girl, she let out a pent breath and found herself looking into a pair of bright but not altogether unfriendly eyes.

  ‘I’ll be goin’ then,’ MacKenzie said.

  ‘No – wait, please.’ Allie waved him to a chair. He sat down.

  ‘Did you know? About the pregnancy?’

  ‘Aye. Och, the whole works knows. She’s boasted about it. Doesn’t even know which laddie knocked her up.’

  ‘Bravado,’ Allie said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to come to me – to one of the welfare people – before things went this far?’

  ‘No.’

  She looked at him wondering. ‘Do you really care so little about what might happen to her? You’ve just fought to keep her job…’

  He shook his head. ‘Not her job. A job. Any job. It’s nae my place to play nursemaid to any little –’ he caught himself ‘– any daft fool of a lassie who gets hersel’ into the family way.’

  ‘I always understood it took two, Mr MacKenzie,’ Allie said equably. ‘And you really don’t give a damn what might happen to her?’

  ‘Aye.’ He was watching her steadily, an odd expression on his face. Allie could not for her life decide if it were compounded most of contempt or pity. She shook her head, defeated. Such total and cold commitment to an ideal with no gentling touch of humanity was beyond her. She detested the girl, as obviously did MacKenzie. But could she simply turn her back and leave her to her undoubtedly grim fate? With an illegitimate baby, no work – for she certainly would not be accepted back after the baby – no money, no home, what would become of her? Or – Allie tried to face the uncomfortable thought honestly – was it her own guilt that made her want to do something for the other girl? Her own child, with or without Tom, would be born into a world of safe and loving care, cushioned by money and family ties.

  ‘Do you know if Miss Brown has a family?’

  ‘Aye. They threw her out. Her da beat the living daylights out of her last time he saw her. So she said.’

  ‘Mr MacKenzie, don’t you think we ought to do something for her?’

  He considered for a long time. ‘Aye,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘Mebbe so.’

  ‘Then, please – you know the city better than I do. Isn’t there someone you could put me in touch with? Someone who might be able to help her? Someone she would accept help from?’

  ‘Well – aye – as a matter of fact there is someone comes to mind.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A friend of mine. Iris Freeman. Local socialist worker. Seems to me that she’d likely know who to go to.’

  ‘Would you arrange for me to meet her?’

  He paused for a moment. ‘Aye.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  He almost smiled. ‘Aye,’ he said again, ‘tonight.’

  * * *

  Allie liked Iris Freeman very much indeed. She was a Londoner in her early twenties who worked in an arms factory in Coventry. The more-or-less self-educated daughter of a railwayman, she was of medium height and slightly built with a quick sense of humour and a directness of manner that could be positively disconcerting. When her initial mild suspicion of Allie had worn off, she proved to be an interesting, even inspiring companion. Alistair MacKenzie introduced them, a little stiltedly, in the poky and decidedly ill-stocked little bar of the small hotel in which Allie was staying, and then excused himself, leaving them together. The ice broken – Allie having convinced Iris that she was genuinely interested in the welfare work that was the other girl’s life – they first arranged for Iris to be put in touch with Sheila Brown and then proceeded with the unstudied enjoyment of kindred spirits to dissect each other’s beliefs and ideals. At the end of the evening, a sobered Allie strongly suspected that she had learned a lot more than she had imparted, and she said so.

  ‘Rubbish!’ Iris grinned as she stood up and pulled on her shabby coat. ‘There aren’t many women with your background in industrial welfare, you know. I’ve got some friends I’d like you to meet. Got time?’

  Allie glanced at her watch. ‘Now?’

  The other woman laughed. ‘When else? We’re all working girls – got no time for get-togethers over afternoon tea. Still, thanks to the Jerries we’re used to doing without our beauty sleep. Feel like staying up half the night? The company’s good.’

  She took Allie to a small two-up-two-down house in a shabby street not far from the hotel. Three young women were already there, huddled around a meagre, palely flickering fire, drinking steaming mugs of Oxo. ‘Don’t take your coat off,’ Iris advised cheerfully. ‘You’ll freeze. Now – meet the Coventry branch of PAWS.’

  ‘PAWS?’

  ‘Poor ’Ardworking Women Socialists,’ chorused the three from the fire. ‘For Christ’s sake, I, close that door,’ added one.

  Allie found herself the target for three pairs of eyes. A little uncomfortably she shoved her cold hands into her pockets and waited for her new acquaintance to introduce her.

  ‘Look what I’ve found, girls,’ said Iris, her grin at Allie friendly, ‘a real live lady capitalist. Let’s get to work on her…’

  * * *

  On the train back to London next day, Allie slept, on and off, despite the discomfort of being jammed between an enormous lady who insisted upon knitting all the way and a skinny young man in sailor’s uniform who had the boniest elbows she had ever encountered. It had been a long night, but the company, as Iris had promised, had been very good indeed. It had been years since she had been so mentally stimulated, so fired with enthusiasm – her own and others’. And the camaraderie of that small group huddled around a fire that had died long before the lively discussion had was with her still. She could not remember a gathering where she had enjoyed herself more. She fell asleep on the thought that she would certainly take them up on their invitation to join them again the next time she visited Coventry.

  She arrived in Kensington late in a dreary afternoon. Her eyeballs felt as if they had been sandpapered, and she ached with fatigue. Certain that if she put down her case and bag and rummaged for her key she would go to sleep where she stood, she leaned on the doorbell with her shoulder.

  Myra opened the door, fresh-looking and immaculate. ‘Hello, darling.’ She kissed her daughter’s cheek. ‘You have a visitor.’

  Allie had already seen him, through the open door of the sitting room. Perched on the edge of an armchair, a bone-china cup and saucer balanced precariously in his long fingers, was a tired-looking but smiling Tom Robinson.

  ‘Tom!’ She dropped her case and ran to him, flinging her arms about his neck as he rose to meet her, nearly knocking him off balance, cup and all. ‘Tom! Where did you come from? How long have you got? When…’

  ‘Whoa!’ He put his cup on the mantelpiece, laughing, and laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. ‘I’ve only got three days. Hitched a lift on a transport. Leaving again Sunday afternoon. Can you manage a couple of days off?’

  Her face fell a little. ‘Not tomorrow, I’m afraid. There’s a meeting I have to go to. But Saturday – yes, all day.’

  And all night? asked his quirked eyebrows.

  She blushed. ‘Where are you staying?’

  He opened his mouth to reply.

  ‘Why here, of course.’ They both looked in surprise at Myra’s composedly smiling face. ‘It’s next to impossible to get a room in London at the moment, and anyway, I wouldn’t dream of allowing anything else. Of course you must stay here.’

  Tom, for once, was caught wordless. ‘Why, Mrs Jordan, I—’

  ‘We don’t have a spare bedroom,’ Alli
e said.

  ‘Oh, come now, darling.’ Myra smiled her sweetest and most formidable smile. ‘We have a very snug sofa. I’m sure Tom will find it as comfortable as any bed he’s occupied.’

  Allie winced.

  ‘You will stay, won’t you, Tom?’

  Tom smiled. ‘Of course. Thank you.’ And Allie found herself wondering, ruefully, not for the first time, how it was that she had not managed over the years to perfect her mother’s apparently effortless ability to get her own way.

  ‘I’d better go and talk to the onion pie,’ Myra said, brightly, ‘tell it to stretch a bit.’ And, having made certain that her daughter and her unlikely lover would remain well and truly under her eye, she left them alone.

  * * *

  Often during those three snatched, oddly dream-like days Allie was tempted to tell Tom about the baby, but she did not, and the longer she left it the more difficult it became. Tom was bright and cheerful, apparently light-hearted, but she sensed the strain in him, the tension beneath the easy armour of laughter. Instinct told her that to tell him now would mean nothing but harm for both of them. Tom, however, had no such qualms about surprising her, as she discovered on Saturday night, dining at the Savoy.

  ‘What would you say,’ he asked, grimacing over coffee that even the Savoy could not make truly palatable, ‘to South Africa?’

  Taken aback, she made a feeble joke: ‘Hello, South Africa?’

  He grinned. ‘We’ve got a South African in the squadron. Great bloke. Great country, too, from the sound of it. I’ve been thinking – after the war it could be the place for a man to be. It’ll be years before Britain’s back on its feet again. Austerity, shortages, picking up the pieces. There’s not much doubt now that we’re going to pull through, but we’ll break ourselves doing it. What about sunshine, servants, grapes, gold, diamonds…’