A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

‘She didn’t mean—’

  ‘I know what she meant. And she’s right. She’s bloody rightl I’m going to hell. I don’t have to take her with me. I’m leaving.’

  ‘Peter.’ Libby, in outdoor clothes, stood at the door, a small suitcase in her hand. ‘Would you find me a taxi? I’m going to Mother’s.’ She had tried to repair her face with make-up. The effect was pitiful, almost clownish, yet her small figure, standing very straight, was oddly dignified.

  Edward made no attempt to approach her. ‘Libby, I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll give you a divorce. Agree to anything that makes it easier.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Peter limped past her into the hall. For the space of perhaps half a dozen heartbeats, Libby and Edward Maybury looked at each other before Libby turned wordlessly away from him.

  * * *

  The four months between the trauma of Libby and Edward’s final fight and the birth of Charlotte Anne Webster on the twenty-sixth of March 1944 were eventful, to say the least. After a miserable, war-weary Christmas of shortages and deprivation, as the nation dragged itself with grim determination into a new year, hoping – and praying – that this one would surely see an end to the fighting, the Luftwaffe suddenly launched a vicious series of night raids on London, a ‘little Blitz’ that did nothing for Londoners’ short tempers, and little for the peace of mind of the thousands of American and Commonwealth troops that packed the capital in preparation for the long-awaited invasion of northern Europe.

  The south of England had once again become one vast armed camp, though this time the aim was openly offensive rather than defensive. Dunkirk was about to be avenged. The newspapers were full of the gallant landings at Anzio, the savage fighting around Monte Cassino. In the Pacific the Americans forged ahead with great courage and at great cost.

  In London – a city under attack once more – the tube stations were again packed to capacity each night, the fires burned in gaunt and gutted buildings, and the guns thundered, torturing the nerves. Children, with the happy adaptability of the young, raced to school each morning collecting on the way streams of ‘flutterers’ – the silver paper strips that were dropped by the enemy raiders to confuse the city’s defensive detecting devices, and which decorated trees and buildings as if a bizarre Christmas had come again. Then at the end of February, as suddenly as they had started, the night attacks stopped, and for a couple of weeks an uneasy peace reigned. Rumours abounded: of Hitler’s new and deadly secret weapon about to be unleashed on the civilian population, of invasion, of yet more ration cuts.

  To Allie, in those last weeks before the baby was due, the most shattering problem was a very personal one. Tom’s letters had stopped. They had not petered out slowly, but simply, frighteningly, had just stopped arriving. Allie determinedly kept her nerves under control, told herself firmly that there could be any number of reasons for this sudden silence, and continued, with Rose, her preparations for the child’s arrival. If something dreadful had happened, someone – surely? – someone would have let her know? But would they? asked a frightened voice somewhere in her head. Tom was not, even at the best of times, the most communicative man in the world. Did anyone even know about her? For three awful weeks she waited, faithfully sending her own letters, talismans against fate, tamping down her fears with logic. She spoke to no one apart from Rose of her terrors, not even Sue, who visited as often as she could, or Iris, who spent a considerable amount of time at Baywood Cottage. Her grim patience was finally rewarded when a letter addressed to her in a strange hand landed on the doormat. She lumbered down the hall and with difficulty bent to pick it up, ripping it open with fingers that were all thumbs.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ Rose appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her pinafore.

  Allie suddenly sat on the stairs, supporting her swollen belly with her hands, the flimsy letter crumpled between her fingers. ‘He’s crashed! I knew it! He’s in hospital! In Italy. He’s too bad to be moved. Oh – Rose!’

  Rose bustled to her. ‘Now, now, don’t take on, my dear. It’s bad for you, and bad for the babe. Now – may I see the letter?’

  ‘Oh – of course.’ Allie handed it to her, seemingly unaware of the tears that were running down her cheeks. ‘It’s written by a nurse. Tom – asked her – to—’

  Rose’s eyes ran swiftly over the paper. ‘But Allie, my love, this is good news! She says he’s on the mend—’

  ‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she?’ Allie asked with an absolute lack of logic. ‘He’s still too ill to write. He might have died. It says – he nearly did die…’ Allie bit hard on the knuckle of her forefinger, the emotional instability of pregnancy unnerving her altogether. ‘Oh, God, I knew there was something wrong! I knew it!’

  ‘Oh, get along with you. He didn’t die, and that’s what matters. He isn’t going to die. “Improving daily” the letter says—’

  ‘But what if…?’ Allie could not voice her worst fears.

  ‘Fiddlesticks to “what if”,’ said the older woman briskly. ‘Come on, my love – you’ve an address now – write to the man!’

  Four days later, in a small cottage hospital, Charlotte Anne arrived, bawling and furious, seven pounds ten ounces of high-powered energy. The birth was fairly easy, the baby strong and healthy. Allie’s only problem was with breast-feeding; after a couple of days of tears and trauma, Charlotte was put on the bottle – which in no way displeased Rose – and thrived. Within a few days Allie was back at Baywood Cottage, recovering her strength, enjoying being able to see her feet again, and listening to the constant roar of military traffic as it thundered down the Kentish lanes towards the coast and enemy-occupied France.

  When little Charley was three weeks old, her father, well enough to travel at last, was transferred to a hospital-cum-nursing home in Yorkshire. Allie, impatient as she was to see him, had to wait another month, however, before she was equal to such a difficult journey, and before she felt confident enough to leave the baby for a couple of days in Rose’s hands – although Allie was more than ready to admit that those hands were probably more competent than her own.

  So it was not until mid-May, with Britain completely given over to invasion fever, that she set off to travel almost half the length of a country that had become something between a vast military warehouse and an invasion platform. Her figure more or less regained, she dressed carefully, for the first time really regretting those lost days before coupons and austerity. From the moment the day had been decided, her nerves had been frayed to breaking point, for this was it – Squadron Leader Tom Robinson would have to learn that he was a father. Telling him was not a task she relished. The journey was going to be bad enough: the thought of the possible cataclysm that lay at the end of it daunted her beyond telling. For the first time she wondered whether it might not have been more sensible to have told him in the beginning…

  * * *

  The hospital was housed in an old mansion, one wing of which had been given over to convalescing servicemen. Spring rain mantled the grounds and drifted softly against the windows. A brisk nurse ushered Allie to an enormous room that was the size of a football pitch and that obviously, in better days, had been a ballroom. The vaulted ceiling, with its chandeliers wrapped inelegantly but safely in dust sheets, was two storeys high; at one end of the room, tall windows looked out to lawns that swept to a tumbling river. Two men in wheelchairs played a dextrous game of table tennis in the centre of the floor, while around a small table another group played cards noisily, and on the far side of the room a dartboard had been set up against a dark green baize board. A billiard table took up most of the space by the long windows. One corner of the room had been turned into a library. Beyond it a small bow window looked onto a pretty little courtyard, enclosed on three sides. A man in a wheelchair sat in this window, dark head bent attentively to the book that lay open on his lap.

  ‘Squadron Leader Robinson,’ said the nurse, pointing. ‘Sist
er says would you please not make the visit too long. He still tires very easily.’

  Allie walked steadily across the wooden floor, her footsteps echoing, as did the shouts of the table-tennis players and the laughter of the other men, to the high, concave ceiling. The table-tennis ball bounced over the floor towards her. She stopped and picked it up, tossed it back to the players with a smile. Tom did not look up until she stood in front of him, waiting. When he did so, she knew with absolute certainty that he had known of her presence from the moment she had entered the room. His expression was cool. Her heart sank.

  ‘Hello there.’ Awkwardly she took his hand and bent to kiss him. He looked very thin. There were two fine and still slightly angry-looking scars running across his forehead into the hairline, and a livid streak of scar tissue marked the left side of his jaw. One arm was still in plaster, as was the lower part of both his legs. All this she had been prepared for, having by now heard by letter of the injuries he had sustained when his combat-damaged aircraft had crash-landed on a temporary airstrip outside Monte Cassino. The unmistakable chill of his greeting, however, was rather more unexpected. She had not thought that hostilities would begin quite so soon. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. They’re hoping to take the plaster off in a couple of days.’

  ‘That’ll be more comfortable.’

  ‘Yes.’ He made no attempt to hold onto her hand as she straightened.

  She pulled a small, straight-backed chair close and sat down.

  ‘How was the journey?’

  ‘Pretty bad, actually. There are hardly any trains for civilians. The whole world’s in uniform and on the move, it seems.’ The clumsiness of that struck her at once, and it was all that she could do not to apologize for it.

  ‘The Second Front,’ he said.

  ‘It looks like it, yes.’

  ‘Not before time. If they don’t get a move on, the Russkies will have taken the whole of Europe, and we’ll be back where we started.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t think Uncle Joe’s going to let go of anything he gets his sticky hands on, do you?’

  ‘I can’t say that I’d really thought about it. You mean – you think the Russians will just keep what they take from the Germans?’

  ‘Eastern Europe isn’t being liberated. It’s just changed hands.’

  ‘Surely not?’

  ‘Ask your new Commie friends. Perhaps they know.’

  She stared at him. ‘My new friends, as you call them, aren’t Communists. They’re socialists. As, I seem to remember, you once were?’

  He shrugged.

  Allie made a determined effort to smile, and to take the undoubted edge off the conversation. ‘Sorry I couldn’t bring you any grapes. They’re in rather short supply. But I did manage this.’ She reached into her bag and triumphantly produced an orange.

  He whistled, and for the first time really smiled. ‘Good Lord, where on earth did you get that?’

  Caught – unable for the moment to explain away a child’s green ration book – she laughed. ‘Libby. Who else? She still has friends in high places.’

  ‘How is she?’ Tom had heard, through Allie’s letters, of Libby’s troubles.

  ‘Not too bad. It’s hit her terribly hard though. I’m worried about her; she acts as if she believes the whole awful business is her fault. Peter Wickham sees quite a lot of her. I think he helps.’ She did not think it necessary to mention the odd change in Libby’s attitude towards her when she had discovered the identity of Charlotte’s father. Allie had expected surprise but not something that to her astonishment could only be described as outrage. She had no doubt at all that her sister had been avoiding her since the disclosure. Libby had not even tried to disguise her fury: ‘Well, of all the sneaky – you and – Tom? And all the time you pretended that you couldn’t stand him – butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! Allie – how could you?’

  ‘Will they marry, do you think? Once the divorce comes through?’

  ‘I really don’t know. There’s no telling what she’ll do. She’s changed.’ Allie leaned back a little tiredly in her chair. ‘But then, who hasn’t?’

  ‘Quite.’

  She looked sharply at him. There could be no mistaking the slight, unfriendly sharpness of the word.

  ‘Tom, what is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes, there is. It’s obvious. Here we are – the first time we’ve seen each other in months, and you keep biting my head off.’

  For the first time in a year, he turned upon her that sardonic, shuttered look that she so hated. It made her want to get up and simply walk away from him. She clenched her teeth. Since the baby, she knew, her temper had been short-fused. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘The first time we’ve seen each other in months. I hardly expected you to swim to Italy. But Yorkshire isn’t half a warring continent away. And I’ve been here for a month…’

  ‘But – I explained in my letters…’

  ‘Excuses. Why bother? You know me. Did I ever ask for half-baked excuses that a child could see through? What is it, Allie? Is there someone else?’

  Her mouth was suddenly very dry, and all her careful, agonized planning, all her well-rehearsed words, seemed to have dried up with it. ‘You could say that,’ she said. ‘I had a baby.’

  ‘Game!’ whooped one of the table-tennis players and spun his wheelchair in a perilous, victorious circle.

  ‘Tom – did you hear what I said?’

  His face was absolutely blank. ‘I heard.’

  ‘Our baby. Her name is Charlotte Anne, and she’s very beautiful – at least I think she will be when she gets some hair.’

  Still he said nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you like that. It was clumsy.’

  Tom seemed at last to be coming to life again. He stirred, let out a breath. ‘When was she born?’

  ‘March. The twenty-sixth.’

  She saw him work it out, saw too the recognition of deception. ‘I see.’

  ‘Tom, I couldn’t tell you when you were here last. I just couldn’t. Don’t you see? After all that I’d said – all that I’d promised – it would have looked as if I were – as if I were trying to trap you. I’d promised I wouldn’t tie you down. And anyway – I couldn’t bear the thought of worrying you while you were flying…’

  ‘Well, bloody hell,’ he said, mildly, ‘what do you think you’ve done now?’

  She shook her head violently. She was mortifyingly close to tears. ‘No! I’m still not tying you down. You don’t have to marry me. I know it isn’t what you want…’

  ‘Oh?’ He looked interested. ‘What do I want then?’

  ‘I don’t know. South Africa?’

  He nodded slightly. ‘Can’t deny it crosses my mind from time to time.’

  An orderly, pushing a tea trolley, clipped briskly, cups rattling, across the floor. ‘Tea, sir? Ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’ Allie felt as if he had offered her nectar. The man poured two teas and left. Tom stirred his, ruminatively, placed the spoon with care in the saucer and lifted the cup with his good hand, surveying Allie over the rim. ‘A father, by God,’ he said, a note of uncertain surprise in his voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A girl, you said.’

  ‘Yes. Charlotte Anne – at least, that’s what I’d like to call her. She hasn’t been christened yet, of course. If you have any great objections to the name…?’

  He shook his head. ‘A girl,’ he said, reflectively, and grinned suddenly, wincing a little as the smile hurt his unhealed face. ‘Wouldn’t you know it? A girl! Allie Jordan and daughter – what a combination!’

  It took her a long moment to join in his laughter.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Charlotte was almost eight months old before Tom was well enough to leave hospital. The summer of invasion had come and gone, and the grim job of liberating western Europe, inch by inch,
sent the hospital trains northward in evergrowing numbers. But that summer’s casualties included more than those trainloads of combat-wounded servicemen. In June, the population of southern England discovered that the fearsome whispers of a Nazi secret weapon had been, after all, more than mere rumour.

  A week after D-Day the first V-1 droned, pilotless, across the Channel, a dehumanized killing machine designed to terrorize the civilian population with its random destruction and death. At first confusion reigned and casualties mounted, and three days after the first flying bomb had landed on London, the Minister of Home Security had to make a statement to the House of Commons explaining what the fearsome things were. From then on the city was in a constant state of alert, a condition wearing to the nerves and unconducive to calm. However, as so often before, the civilian population adapted to this new threat remarkably quickly, going about their business as the ‘doodlebugs’, as they were almost universally nicknamed, droned overhead, only diving for cover in the tell-tale silence that followed the cutting of the engine. If you heard the bomb go off, you were safe. If you didn’t, you were probably dead. By August, seventy V-1s were dropping on London each day; the skies of Kent and Sussex, battlefield of four years before, had a new nickname – ‘Flying Bomb Alley’.

  In Europe the battle raged; the fortress, stone by painful stone, was falling, but at terrible cost. And while the doodlebugs continued to rain on southern England, a new rumour began to circulate, and a new fear turned eyes skywards. What was a V-2? Theories ranged from a giant version of the V-1 to an incendiary fog, and the unsettling anxiety did nothing to ease the nervous strain of a population too long at war. When, however, in September, a series of unexplained incidents occurred, people at first had no idea that Hitler’s new secret weapon was actually involved. After all, inexplicable explosions, if not exactly commonplace, were at least not very much out of the ordinary – an unexploded bomb gone up, a fractured gas main – but then the truth dawned. London was under rocket attack. The V-2s had arrived: and the population, not surprisingly, detested them. They were worse than the flying bombs; there was no sound, no warning and, apparently, no defence. But at least, as the more philosophical citizens often pointed out, their victims had no time for terror. They simply never knew what hit them.