A Fragile Peace Read online

  A Fragile Peace

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Two

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Three

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Copyright

  Part One

  Summer 1936

  Chapter One

  There was absolutely nothing in the pleasant, late summer afternoon to prepare the Jordan family for the shock that was to come. The garden party in full swing on the lawns of Ashdown could already, in the first hour, be counted a success, and even the weather, uncertain for a week, had chosen to be kind. It probably, thought Allie Jordan just a little tartly, had not dared to be otherwise. The party was in aid of the fund set up by her mother towards the cost of repairing the fast-decaying roof of the village church: caught between Myra Jordan and God, Allie felt, not even the weather would dare to misbehave.

  From the leaf-shielded sanctuary of her hiding place, she watched the activity on the wide lawns beneath her, as she sat tucked into the familiar, armchair-like niche where she had spent so many of the timeless hours of childhood, her back to the trunk of the ancient tree, her long legs stretched out along a branch. It still surprised her to see how far her feet reached – it now required considerable effort to wedge herself into a space in which, when first she had discovered this refuge, she had been able to curl up like a small squirrel. She leaned her head back, half-closing her eyes, letting little flickering darts of sunshine make rainbows through her lashes. The sound of voices and laughter rose and fell in the garden beneath her. Teacups rattled in their saucers. From across the river, the church clock struck the half hour. She smiled. She loved the sound of that old clock. It had been her constant companion ever since she could remember – it had brought a small girl home from the surrounding woods and fields in time for tea, had counted and comforted through the occasional sleepless nights of childish illness, had struck the hours, the days, the years of her young life with a steady, kindly regularity that spoke of changelessness and security. She stirred a little. It was easy in this drowsy, rustling world of green to dream of being a child again. Easy to push away thoughts of the future, of coming adulthood, of independence and responsibility. Easy to ignore for the moment the awful stirrings and buried fears of a young womanhood towards which one part of her yearned and from which, confusingly, another shrank—

  As the sound of the clock’s chimes died, she allowed herself to slip towards that enjoyable, melancholic nostalgia that is peculiar to the very young. Under this tree, on summer nights that now seemed a million years distant, her father had spent hours reading to her and her brother Richard – Libby, her elder sister, had never been able to sit still long enough to get through a chapter, let alone a whole book. Allie treasured the sound of his pleasant voice in the still evening air, saw the rapt look on the young Richard’s face as he lived the dramas of Coral Island and Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Richard was at Cambridge now, had been there a year, was no longer the skinny, scruffy companion-in-mischief of their very young days, or the hero-worshipped leader of school holiday pranks, but a young man who lived in a world in which she had no real part…

  The sudden, booming voice from beneath her nearly knocked her off her perch.

  ‘—but my dear, you can’t possibly mean it?’ Allie recognized Mrs Angus MacKenzie, her plump jowls pink and faintly sheened with sweat beneath a flower-trimmed, improbably girlish hat. ‘A progressive school?’ – she invested the adjective with a kind of dismissive distaste – ‘Surely not?’

  The little woman to whom she was speaking opened her mouth to reply.

  Mrs MacKenzie steamrollered severely on. ‘Dear Angus says – and I’m bound to say that I agree with him wholeheartedly – that these establishments will be the certain ruin of an otherwise excellent educational system. I do beg you to think again, my dear. There’s no discipline, you realize? Absolutely none—’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘For your daughter’s sake, my dear, I do think you’d be very wise to reconsider. Why not let me send you the prospectus for St Hilda’s? Now there is a thoroughly excellent establishment. I am able to recommend it personally with an absolutely clear conscience. Our dear Cynthia has done so very well at St Hilda’s…’

  The two women moved away. Allie, her wide mouth turned down expressively, spared a moment to hope, for an unknown girl’s sake, that her mother would not be persuaded to force her into the mould – or the company – of dreadful Cynthia MacKenzie.

  ‘—not that I don’t feel sorry for some of these unemployed chappies, or anything like that.’ A couple of young men in blazers and flannels, Cambridge acquaintances of Richard’s, strolled beneath the tree, their voices clear and clipped in the summer air. ‘But, dammit, it isn’t as if we aren’t all suffering to a greater or lesser degree. And one can’t help feeling that if these people really wanted to work that badly they’d do something about it and stop wasting everyone’s time with this idiotic marching up and down the country…’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more, old man. As Benjie was saying the other day—’

  Whatever Benjie had said was lost in a sudden shout of laughter from the part of the garden where the hoop-la had been set up. Allie’s mind dwelt on the provoking scrap of conversation. Could people who lived in warmth, comfort and security truly be so blind to the needs of others? A few months before, she had watched a ragged line of hunger- marchers tramp through the streets of London, their grim faces, like their lives, bleakly marked by the helpless destitution forced upon them by the Depression. The sight had affected her deeply. When, just after that, her father had regretfully decided that Jordan Engineering, a small subsidiary of the family firm in the hard-hit North East, must close, she had – to her mother’s exasperation – agonized for weeks over the fate of the families of men thrown out of work and onto a parsimonious and totally inadequate dole.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Allie,’ Myra Jordan had snapped at last, ‘what do you think we can do about it? Do you think your father wants to close the wretched place down? It isn’t just the men that will suffer, you know. Have you forgotten that poor Uncle Albert has run that part of the business for nearly twenty years? How do you suppose he feels?’

  ‘Uncle Albert’s going to the Manchester works, isn’t he?’ Allie had asked doggedly, wincing at the perilous gleam in her mother’s sapphire eyes. ‘He isn’t losing his job.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculously naïve. What do you suggest we do? Keep the Darlington works open at the expense of Manchester and Nottingham? And the new venture in Coventry – what of the men employed there? I doubt many of them are losing sleep about Darlington. They know which side their bread’s buttered. Really, darling, it’s all very well to be idealistic, but the world simply doesn’t run that way. We can’t eat fine words and promises, and neither can your Jarrow marchers. It simply doesn’t make economic sense to keep Jordan Engineering goi
ng, so there must be an end to it. Is it your father’s fault – the family’s fault – that drastic ills demand drastic remedies? If we are to keep our heads above water in these difficult times, and protect ourselves and the future of Jordan Industries, there are sacrifices to be made…’

  She had thought then, but had dared not say, and thought again now, remembering, her long mouth wry, that she had not noticed much sacrificing going on at Ashdown, nor yet in the comfortable and well-staffed offices in London from which her father, Robert, ran Jordan Industries. The Bentley still stood on the sweep of the drive; Mrs Welsh, the family cook, still laid on meals for a family of five that Allie suspected might feed twice that number; she herself still attended the same expensive boarding school that her sister had left three years before. If sacrifices were being made, then her common sense told her that someone else was making them. And yet – she knew that in a way her mother was right. For every man that Jordan Industries had lost over the past few years it had kept two in employment. Everyone accepted that her father and the various uncles and cousins who made up the management of the diverse small engineering works that comprised Jordan Industries were reasonable, honest and caring employers, insofar as present conditions allowed. Her own great-grandfather had founded the business in a tiny converted blacksmith’s forge in the back streets of Birmingham nearly a century before; two generations of Jordans had worked hard since to establish and successfully expand it. Why shouldn’t the family enjoy the profits of its labours? If Uncle Willie wanted to spend his time at Epsom and Newmarket, and cousin Bob had a hankering for fast motor cars, whose business was it but theirs? Who had the right to condemn them? The man who marched on blistered feet for the right to work, to feed his family? The shop steward who had been quietly sacked from the new Coventry works before he could become a troublemaker? She sighed. She did not know the answer. Worse – she had a strong and frustrating suspicion that she had not discovered the right questions…

  Another shout of laughter, rising from the hoop-la stall, drew her attention back to the present. She craned her neck to look and, as she did so, caught sight of a figure on the terrace outside the french windows that led into the dining room. A tall, slim woman in sapphire-blue silk which glimmered, expensively jewel-like, in the sunshine had come from the house. She stood with graceful authority a little above the crowded lawns, her strong-boned, beautiful face shaded by a hat of exactly the same colour as her dress, her eyes moving slowly over the scene below her, as if looking for someone. Instinctively Allie shrank back against the trunk of the tree. If her mother caught her hiding here, there would be the devil to pay. Worse. There was no doubt in Allie’s mind that she would rather take her chances with the devil any day than face the ice-sharp and scathing edge of her mother’s rare anger.

  She tried to narrow her wide shoulders, contract her long and bony limbs. She felt suddenly enormous, a gawky young giantess, Alice after she had eaten the wrong side of the mushroom. As she felt her mother’s brilliant eyes sweep her hiding place, she thanked God – and her sister Libby – that she was wearing, after all, her second-best dress, which was green. Not, she knew, that Libby’s insistence that she should not wear her pink had been anything but entirely selfish. Libby herself was wearing a deep rose pink this afternoon and, as she had pointed out with cruel and careless truth, it suited her so much better that it would not have flattered Allie to try to compete. ‘… besides, darling, we’d look like a couple of bookends – a big one and a small one. How silly! Wear your green, love, there’s a pet.’ Libby had put her silver-blonde head on one side and regarded Allie with tolerant and absolutely genuine affection. ‘You’re still such a baby, darling, do you know that? That wretched school! Navy blue knickers and gym slips at seventeen, honestly, it’s too bad! God, how I hated it. Still, it won’t be long now, will it? But oh, my Lord—’ she had rolled her eyes in remembered agony ‘—just wait till you get to Switzerland! You’ll just die when you see the difference between the poor little stick-in-the-mud anglaises and les chic continentals!’

  Allie’s retort that she had no intention of going to Switzerland had been wisely bitten back; it had not been the time to precipitate a pitched battle. Now she sat, scarcely breathing, watching her mother and praying that her refuge would not be discovered.

  * * *

  Myra Jordan was well content, on the whole, with what she saw as she scanned the grounds of Ashdown, her swift, bright glance taking in every tiny detail. The afternoon was running smoothly and well – as she knew, with no conceit, was only to be expected from anything in which she invested her time, energy, and considerable organizing ability. The garden looked lovely: the velvet lawns manicured, the rose garden symmetrical in weedless and perfumed beauty, the box hedges trimmed to dark perfection, solid and sweet-smelling. She made a mental note to congratulate Browning, the gardener; he had excelled himself. In the orchard beyond the rose garden, young people strolled, the girls’ dresses and hats butterfly-bright in the stippled shade. Through the well-pruned trees she could see the glitter of the river and beyond that the Kentish countryside rolled in a dappled patchwork to the sky. Nearer to hand, beneath the terrace on which she stood, were set chairs and tables. Half a dozen women in dark dresses and snow-white starched aprons moved among the seated guests with trays laden with cakes, tea and lemonade.

  Myra’s brilliant blue eyes moved across the chattering crowds. Now and again she acknowledged a caught glance or a lifted hand with a smile and a slight inclination of her head. Her husband Robert stood by the fountain in earnest conversation with the vicar and his wife. As he glanced up, she caught his eye and a smiling, private signal passed between them before, soberly attentive, he turned back to his guests. Elizabeth, the elder of their two daughters, was the centre of a noisy group of laughing young people who were trying their hands at the skittles that had been set up on the tennis court. As Myra watched, a dark-haired young man in the regulation flannels and open-necked shirt bowled with a flourish and scattered the wooden ninepins – relics of the young Jordans’ childhood – in all directions. Receiving his prize – a battered teddy bear with a glumly ferocious expression – he presented it with an even more picturesque flourish to Libby who, to the young man’s obvious mortification, tossed it into the air for one of her friends to catch, glancing as she did so in an oddly challenging way at a solitary figure who leaned, hands in pockets, in the shade of the big oak tree that sheltered the court. Myra’s eyes, following her daughter’s, chilled perceptibly at the sight of the slight, hard-faced young man who stood watching the bowlers with no trace of expression on his face. He neither acknowledged Libby’s provocative look nor moved. Myra’s lips tightened. She had disliked Tom Robinson from the instant she had met him, and the past month had done nothing to improve her opinion of the young man. She considered him to be a disruptive influence on her son: she had not until this moment ever considered that he might have an equally disturbing effect on her daughters.

  The thought brought to mind the original reason for this mental roll-call of the family. Where was Alexandra? She had been left an hour ago dutifully entertaining the extremely rich if undoubtedly unpleasant Mrs Osbert Ogilvy from whom Myra was attempting to extract a handsome subscription for her church roof fund. At some time during that hour, Allie had disappeared and Myra, discovering the disgruntled and deserted Mrs Ogilvy marching firmly down the drive towards the gates, had been obliged to exert her most tactful charm to guide her back before she and her money disappeared into her rather vulgar limousine, never to return. Fifteen minutes had then been expended upon finding some innocent ignorant enough of the lady’s character to engage her in conversation. Meanwhile, of Allie there had been absolutely no sign.

  Myra’s shining, fashionably pointed shoe tapped with rhythmic impatience upon the pale marble of the terrace. Really, it was high time that the child grew out of this disconcerting habit of disappearing to God knew where for hours at a time. Time, in fact, she added to hers
elf a little grimly, smiling graciously at a passing guest, that Alexandra grew out of a lot of silly habits that she seemed intent upon preserving from a rather awkward childhood – ‘Myra, darling!’ called a voice from the lawn, ‘what a marvellous turn-out! Marvellous!’ Myra smiled and waved in acknowledgement – Allie had to learn that with young ladyhood came certain obligations, certain socially acceptable ways of thought and behaviour. She was a nice enough child, of course, but…

  Myra’s glance flicked again to where Libby stood, shining head thrown back in laughter, her every movement prettily graceful, her bright face flower-like in the sunshine. Her mother sighed, imperceptibly. The finishing school in Switzerland had produced in Libby just exactly that style and grace with which a young woman of moderate fortune and position could manipulate the world to her advantage. Myra hoped, with what she herself recognized as more fervency than conviction, that the establishment might work the same alchemy on her younger daughter. She was not unaware of Allie’s dislike of the idea, any more than she was ignorant of the fact that her daughter had been toying hopefully with the idea of going to university. But, in her mother’s firm opinion, to allow that would only – heaven forbid! – turn the girl into a worse blue stocking than she was already. It would pander to the child’s most unbecoming attitudes and ideas, and in particular her regrettable and misguided growing interest in what Myra thought of, quite simply, as ‘The Wrong Kind of Politics’.

  Myra was not insensitive to the plight of working people, to the distress and anguish caused by the worst depression that the country had ever suffered, but she firmly believed in law, order and the utter rectitude of the English ruling classes. Labour politics appalled her; they could, in her opinion, bring nothing to the country but chaos and destruction. Her eyes wandered again, speculatively, taking in the world around her, the secure, pleasant world over which she held sway and which she would defend to the death. Let the unpleasant little housepainter restore order in Germany by whatever method he wished. Let the comic-opera ‘king’ of Italy strut as the Emperor of Abyssinia. Let the Spanish tear themselves apart – it was neither the first, nor probably the last time. Let the Wall Street investors scramble as best they might from the pits of greed that they had dug for themselves. Let the unemployed be grateful for those industrious souls who ordered their lives better, paid their taxes and provided the dole. The world had always been thus, and Myra could see no possible argument for change. It infuriated her that two of her children had been tainted by the infection of left-wing politics, for it was Richard even more than Allie who preached what to his mother’s ears sounded like sedition and revolution. Richard, indeed, who had first introduced his sister to these dangerous and stupid ideas – as it had been he who had nearly drowned Allie when she had followed him blindly onto the thin ice of the village pond, who had taught her to bowl overarm in a way so successful that, to both their delight and their mother’s horror, she had been drafted into the village cricket team…