A Fragile Peace

  She laughed delightedly. ‘Blood brothers without the blood?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Done.’

  As they turned to continue walking, he glanced at her. ‘May a blood brother ask a personal question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You and Tom. What’s going to happen?’

  She was silent a long time. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘That’s the simple truth. We’re living in a kind of vacuum atmoment – as I suppose we all are – waiting for the war to end. After that – oh, I don’t know, we don’t seem able to talk about it. He’s not flying any more, you know.’ She paused, added wryly, ‘A desk-bound Tom Robinson isn’t the easiest creature in the world to cope with, I have to say.’

  Peter did not comment.

  ‘I think he’d marry me if I forced him to it. Threw hysterics, that kind of thing. Perhaps that’s even what he wants me to do – I don’t know. But I won’t. It would be no good. It has to come from him, has to be his choice. Or he’ll be hell to live with and we’ll break up anyway.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you,’ asked Peter carefully, ‘that—’ He stopped.

  ‘—that he’ll be hell to live with anyway? Yes. But I’d take that chance. It’s funny…’ They had come to a gate. She leaned against it, digging at the soft wood with her fingernail. ‘… if it weren’t for Charlotte I’d do anything to be with him. Go anywhere. It’s she who somehow holds the key. Poor little devil. Hardly fair, is it?’ She leaned on the gate, looking at Peter. ‘You’ve never really liked Tom, have you?’

  ‘Honestly? No, I never have.’

  ‘He’s a difficult man to like.’ Allie kicked at a pile of leaves, looked up with a sudden smile. ‘But I like him. I’ve only just realized it, but I do. There’s a possibility that he might go to South Africa after the war, did you know?’

  ‘South Africa?’

  ‘Yes. Land of opportunity and all that. You can’t blame him.’

  ‘And you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t leave Charlotte. Besides—’

  ‘You mean he wouldn’t want her with you?’

  ‘Almost certainly not. There’s – a sort of wall between them. And it isn’t just Tom. She’s as bad as he is. Do you know, she won’t even say his name? If I didn’t know better I’d say it was pure perversity. She just won’t say it, no matter how hard I try.’ There was a note almost of despair in her laughter. ‘What a pair! Anyway,’ she pushed herself away from the gate, pulled her glove back onto her cold hand, ‘Charlotte isn’t the only reason I don’t want to leave the country after the war.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She hesitated. ‘Peter, I haven’t mentioned this to anyone else – but I’d appreciate your advice.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A friend of mine has had tentative advances made towards her by the Labour Party. There’ll be an election after the war. There’ll be a lot of women voting, and more of them will know what they’re voting for than ever before. The socialists want their votes. To get them they want to put up more women candidates. Iris is going to be one of them. She wants my help. And I want to give it. One day—’

  ‘One day you might like to have a go yourself?’

  ‘Yes. But I need experience. Iris is forming a local committee. She wants me on it.’

  ‘And you want to be on it.’

  ‘I want more than that, but yes, it’s a start. It’s a chance to do something – or at least to try to do something. Something I couldn’t do in South Africa, however brightly the sun shone. Am I being absurd?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. What’s stopping you?’

  ‘Tom’s stopping me. I love him. And he’ll hate this. Oh, how he’ll hate it.’

  ‘Are you sure? Shouldn’t you give him the chance? Explain to him? If he can’t – or won’t – understand, then make a decision based on that. But give him the chance to say no.’

  Tom would leave. She knew it. She would give him the excuse, and he would leave. ‘I’m not sure I can face it,’ she said.

  Peter’s voice was sympathetic, his words practical, as she had known they would be. ‘You have to. Sooner or later. Why not now?’

  * * *

  It was more than a month later before the opportunity presented itself for her to take Peter’s advice. The Allies were across the Rhine. Iwo Jima had fallen. The British public, righteously angry as it was, had nevertheless felt twinges of disconcerted sympathy at the pictures of the bloody shambles to which the British and American bombing offensive had reduced cities like Dresden and Cologne. It was now only a matter of time. And it was Charlotte Anne’s first birthday.

  Allie and Tom were in the kitchen, she washing the crockery from their little tea party, he wiping it. Apparently inconsequentially, the conversation had turned to politics.

  ‘Who was it,’ asked Tom, ‘who described democracy as the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people?’

  ‘Oscar Wilde,’ Allie said shortly.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Just because it’s clever doesn’t make it right.’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘I don’t think I suggested that it did. The phrase just occurred to me, that’s all.’

  She swallowed, concentrated hard on washing a perfectly clean plate. ‘Tom? I – wanted to talk to you about something.’

  She sensed his sudden stillness. Very precisely he placed the cup he had dried on the kitchen table. ‘Of course.’ His voice was light.

  ‘Us,’ she said, bluntly.

  The silence behind her finally forced her to turn. He had perched on the edge of the table and was watching her, waiting. ‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.

  ‘I really think—’ She stopped. ‘What did you say?’

  He was obviously enjoying himself. ‘I said “Will you marry me?” You aren’t the only one who’s been doing some thinking. My darling, do shut your mouth – there’s a bus coming. Say something.’

  ‘I – you mean you don’t want to go to South Africa?’

  ‘Ah.’ He looked down at his neat, narrow hands. ‘Well now, I didn’t say that exactly. What I had in mind was that we should get married and go together. We could send for Charley in a year or so, once we’re settled—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Allie – think about it – what is there here?’

  ‘No!’ She turned from him, blinded by tears, fiercely scrubbed at a saucer that was a blur in her hands.

  ‘You won’t even think about it?’ His voice was frigid.

  ‘I have thought about it. Constantly. You know I have. But it isn’t just you and me. It’s Charley. I won’t leave her. No –’ as he began to speak ‘– not even for a year. That could so easily turn to two, and then three. And there’s something else.’

  ‘Oh?’ His voice was distant. He hardly seemed interested.

  ‘Iris Freeman has agreed to stand as a Labour candidate in the next election. She wants my help, and I’ve agreed to give it. But that isn’t all. I’m going to do my damndest to make sure that when the next election comes around, someone wants me. It may sound stupid, but I’m going to have a go. I’ve a life of my own to lead, Tom. I can’t just trail around the world behind you, tying you down. You’d finish up hating me. I’d finish up hating myself. Yes, I love you. Yes, I want to marry you. But I can’t leave Charley, and I can’t give up my own life. I’m sorry—’ She stopped at the violent slamming of the back door, stood staring at dark and greasy water miserably.

  His disappointment and anger took him down the long garden path to the front gate. There he stopped. Charlotte stood by the garden gate on unsteady legs. Solemnly she watched him as he strode towards her. He hesitated, unable to open the gate without physically moving her out of the way. They stared at each other, blue eye to blue eye. Then, utterly unexpectedly, the child’s face broke into a smile like summer sunshine and, balanced precariously on her own two pudgy feet, she lifted her arms to him.

  Allie was s
till standing at the sink, torn between anger and wretchedness when she heard the door open behind her. She turned. Stared. Tom stood unsmiling in the doorway, Charley perched awkwardly upon one crooked arm, her fingers buried securely in his hair.

  With some degree of competence, Tom shifted her to his more secure arm, regarded Allie thoughtfully. ‘There’s every possibility,’ he said, ‘that one of these days you’ll make someone an absolutely splendid MP. But something tells me you’re going to make one hell of a stroppy wife.’

  She dried her hands – and her face – composedly on a worn tea towel, kissed him, offered her finger to the laughing child. ‘Serves you right,’ she said.

  First published in Great Britain in 1984 by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd.

  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

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  Copyright © Teresa Crane, 1984

  The moral right of Teresa Crane to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781788633635

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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