A Fragile Peace Read online

  Beneath the old oak tree the solitary figure of Tom Robinson still leaned, motionless. An expression of pure dislike flickered across Myra’s lovely face. There stood the real culprit. The infection that fevered Richard and was in danger of afflicting Allie came directly from him. She felt a small spur of anger as she watched him. The boy had not even the common courtesy to appear to be enjoying himself. He was watching the activity around him with an expression of detachment that to Myra’s eyes was infuriatingly close to contempt. Tom Robinson, she thought grimly, had outstayed his welcome. Richard’s friend or no, he must be made to understand that his presence at Ashdown was no longer welcome. And he could make, she added to herself, what he wished of that. For all Myra’s strongly held views, she was no snob. She had every admiration for a lad who through gruelling hard work and – according to Richard – the application of a brilliant mind had won through from a back street in London’s East End to a place in one of the finest universities in the world. Her objections to young Robinson were quite genuinely rooted not in his background but in what she considered to be his disruptive and difficult personality. He was a dangerous and rather disturbing young man, and there was no place in Myra’s scheme of things for such a one.

  ‘Myra, darling!’ Myra turned, almost into the arms of a small, vivacious woman in poppy red. ‘I’ve been looking just everywhere for you!’

  ‘Emmie! When did you get back?’

  ‘We docked yesterday, darling. Southampton.’ The woman’s dark eyes sparkled. ‘We left a few days early. I just refused to miss your shindig! New York was unbearable. Unbearable. Like a Turkish bath. Hotter.’ She tucked a small hand into the crook of Myra’s arm, guided her along the terrace. ‘I’ve so much to tell you. We met the Bertie Smythes, you know – oh, what a bore that man is! – but they know so many people that you have to forgive him or no one would ever invite you anywhere. Myra, darling,’ she scolded, ‘you aren’t listening!’

  Myra smiled. ‘Yes I am. I’m just wondering where Allie’s got to, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, never mind that. She’s down in the orchard with the other young people, I’ll be bound.’ Her friend leaned her dark little head confidentially close. ‘I’m dying to talk to you about the absolutely scandalous reports in the American papers…’

  ‘Reports?’

  ‘The King, silly. The King. And Mrs Simpson—’

  ‘Oh, come now, Emmie—’

  ‘It’s no good “coming now” me. I know they’ve denied it here, but it’s all over the papers in the States. They’re cruising together. The King and a married woman! And her husband is going to sue for divorce, or so they say…’

  Myra’s attention was caught at last. ‘Divorce? Surely not?’

  Emmie laughed delightedly. ‘Come and sit down. I positively devoured every report I could find. Memorized them! I’ll tell you all about it…’

  * * *

  Allie, still in her tree, sighed with relief to see her mother’s attention taken from the garden. Her heart was pounding in a quite ridiculous fashion and her every muscle ached. Time, she decided, to escape while the going was good—

  ‘Allie! What in heaven’s name are you doing up there?’

  She almost fell from the branch in shock. ‘Richard, you beast! You scared the life out of me!’

  Her brother stood beneath her, looking up, hands on hips, his blue eyes, as brilliant as his mother’s, alight with a suppressed excitement that Allie, in her present predicament, at first barely noticed. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you, Pudding. I’ve something to tell you.’

  ‘Don’t call me Pudding.’ The tone was irritable. Allie peered down through the screen of leaves. ‘What’s the matter? Did you win a coconut or something?’ she asked ungraciously.

  There was more than a touch of his mother, too, in the sudden angry tightening of his lips. ‘This is serious, Al. I really do have something to tell you.’ His air of tense excitement was unmistakable now; it puzzled and rather perturbed Allie. Richard made as if to turn away.

  ‘Wait. I’m coming.’ With remarkable agility the girl twisted her body and swung herself down from the branch, landing lightly beside her brother to the astonishment of an elderly couple who were strolling past. She tossed back her short, brown, wavy hair with a sharp movement of her head. ‘Now. What did you want to tell me?’

  She tilted her head against the low-slanting sun to look up at him. Richard Jordan was tall and slim and possessed those regular, clear-cut features which, beneath his short fair hair were the very picture of upper-middle-class young English manhood. Yet there was a look about the bright eyes, an undeniable softness in the mouth that belied the decisive line of jaw and cheekbone. It was a face made for ready laughter, a friendly, oddly lazy face, its weakness hidden by the spectacular bone structure he had inherited from his mother. Just now it had about it an almost feverish look. Unusual colour stained his cheekbones and there was a look in his eyes that worried Allie. She had seen that look before, in a shared childhood of scrapes and mischief. It always meant trouble.

  ‘Well?’ She eyed him warily.

  Richard glanced round, nervously. ‘Not here. Come to the old summer house.’

  She followed him with growing misgiving, into the hot and musty dimness of the disused summer house. Motes of golden dust, disturbed by their coming, hovered and swirled in the slanting, metallic rays of the sun. The small room was a jumble of broken deck chairs, old tennis rackets, discarded toys. As children they had played here. It had been their secret place, sacrosanct and private, even from Libby. Allie waited for him to speak and still he did not. Outside the open door she saw a long shadow move.

  ‘Richard, what is it?’

  He nibbled his lip, watching her. The air about them was suffocatingly close.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘I’m – we’re – going to Spain.’

  The blurted words fell like stones into a well, and in just that way their meaning took full moments to reach Allie’s mind. She stared at him. ‘But – you can’t! There’s a—’ She stopped. Idiotically she had been about to say, ‘There’s a war in Spain.’

  An intolerable silence lengthened. The shadow beyond the door moved again.

  ‘It’s a joke, isn’t it? A silly joke?’ Allie’s voice lifted sharply, barely controlled. ‘Richard, honestly, you can be really…’ the words faded into silence.

  He took a long, slow breath. ‘No, Pudding. It isn’t a joke. We’re going. Today. Now. I didn’t want to – couldn’t – go, without saying goodbye. At least to you. But you’ve got to promise that you won’t tell anyone until we’re well away. You know what they are. They’ll never understand. They’ll try to stop us. Me,’ he amended. His voice had an awful, raw edge to it.

  ‘Richard, you can’t mean it?’ Faintly, through the open door, she could hear the sounds of the garden party, echoes of sanity in a world unexpectedly mad. ‘They’re killing each other out there! I mean – what do you think you can do? You aren’t a soldier! And what about Cambridge? You so much wanted – you worked so hard – Rich, you’re out of your mind!’ She heard the babbling voice as if it had belonged to a stranger. Still she searched his face for some sign that the whole thing was some tastelessly awful joke. And knew it was not.

  In a silence intensified by the heat, they stared at each other.

  Richard half-turned from her. ‘I thought you, of all of them, might understand.’

  She still felt as if he had hit her. Suddenly the fierce and unexpected temper that had plagued her all her life flared. ‘Well, you were wrong. I don’t understand. I don’t begin to understand. And what’s more, I don’t think you do, either. You’ve taken leave of your senses!’ She flung past him, making for the door. ‘I’ve never heard anything so lunatic in my life. I’m going to find Mother—’ She stopped, her way barred by a long arm across the open doorway. She lifted her head and found herself looking, as she had known she would, into a pair of pale, cool eyes. If Myra Jorda
n had found her son’s friend graceless and disagreeable, she would have been surprised to know that her younger daughter had detested him from the moment he had set foot in the house. Characteristically Allie had hidden it, unwilling to upset her brother or to precipitate unnecessary unpleasantness. At this moment, however, such considerations were a long way beyond her.

  ‘Get out of my way.’

  Tom Robinson smiled, very slightly, and with no humour at all. He did not move.

  She heard Richard come up behind her, but did not turn to look at him. ‘This whole stupid business is your doing, isn’t it?’ she asked the slight, still form who barred her way, her voice low and shaking with the effort it took to control it. ‘Not even Richard would think up something as half-baked as this on his own.’

  ‘The half-baked idea was his, all right.’ The flat vowels of London which he made no attempt to disguise in no way detracted from a voice which was surprisingly light and melodic. ‘He insisted on kissing his baby sister goodbye.’

  Already perspiring in the heat, she flushed hotly. ‘And do you find that so surprising? If you’d been half a man you’d have seen that he said goodbye to his parents too—’

  ‘Half a man? Or half a gentleman, do you mean? The two things aren’t necessarily the same, you know.’ His voice was softly derisive. ‘The one I am – the other I’d never pretend to—’

  She stormed on as if he had not spoken, ‘But you wouldn’t let him do that, would you? Oh no. He might find himself listening to a bit of sense. You might have to find some other idiot to talk into this – this madness.’

  He straightened. He was not much taller than Allie. His dark hair was straight and flopped over his eyes, his face thin, hard-eyed. In the fear of losing her brother, she hated him.

  ‘I didn’t talk Richard into anything,’ he said quietly. ‘He doesn’t have to come. As a matter of simple fact, that bit was his idea, not mine. I wanted to go alone. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss what you or your parents or anyone else thinks or does. It’s nothing to do with me. I’m going. There’s an end. Richard’s coming is his own idea and his own business. I even tried to stop him.’ His eyes flicked over her shoulder. ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ There was a kind of humiliation in her brother’s voice that made Allie flinch. She turned to look at him. He was watching Tom with a painful intensity. ‘Allie, you don’t understand,’ he said again, ‘Tom would have been off on his own a week ago. I kept him here. I wanted to go with him. I have to go with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  A hand spun her round, holding her wrist. Tom Robinson’s voice when he spoke was as stone-hard as his eyes. ‘To fight against something, Little Red Riding Hood, that if it isn’t stopped by suckers like us will eat up the whole of Europe – including your nice, safe, middle-class corner – and spit out the bones. To make certain that the brown shirts that are flapping on the washing lines of Germany and Italy and Spain don’t start blowing in the winds of Kent. Though why the bloody hell I should care about that is beyond me. I’ll tell you what I do care about, though. I care about the little Jew-boy who runs our corner shop and gives my Mum tick when she needs it. I care about my Dad who’s a union man and proud of it. I care about freedom—’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that simple.’

  ‘Of course it bloody isn’t! Nothing is!’

  ‘You don’t have to go to Spain to fight Fascism,’ she said, doggedly.

  ‘Where in hell else are we going to do it?’

  ‘Try here. Right here. Try setting your own house in order before you go interfering in other people’s problems—’

  ‘Allie…’said Richard, miserably.

  ‘—but that’s not what you want, is it? You won’t get any medals for working in the back streets of London, will you? Or in the mills of Lancashire? Or for standing up against Mosley and his thugs? Those blackshirts aren’t as far away as you seem to think. If you care so much for your little Jewish shopkeeper, why don’t you stay here and defend him?’

  To her insupportable fury, he laughed. ‘My dear Allie, perhaps I should leave that task to you. Abie will be in very capable hands. No blackshirt could stand up to such temper.’

  ‘It isn’t funny.’

  ‘I didn’t intend it to be.’ His uncharacteristic spurt of anger appeared to have died entirely, but his fingers around her wrist were still savage. The pain tingled to her fingertips. She felt as if the bones of her wrist were grating together.

  ‘Let go of me.’

  For the space of a couple of heartbeats, he held her without relaxing his grip. Then, with a gesture of dismissal, he released her and stepped back. ‘So long, then, Rich.’ It was calculated, and they all knew it.

  ‘No, Tom – wait!’

  ‘Let him go, Richard!’

  Richard’s face suffused. ‘Shut up, Allie! Will you just shut up!’

  She stared at him, tears pricking behind eyes that were dry and burning. Tom stood absolutely still, leaning against the door jamb, a dark figure silhouetted against the brilliance of the fast-setting sun which had dipped to touch the tops of the trees of the orchard, limning them in fire.

  ‘You can’t go without me now,’ said Richard, unashamedly pleading.

  The dark figure shrugged. ‘I’m not getting stopped on the dockside by your parents’ henchmen.’

  Richard turned on Allie. ‘I should have gone without telling you. That was what Tom wanted, and he was right. But I tell you this: you won’t stop me. I swear it. They can’t watch me all the time, can’t lock me up. If I’m forced to stay, I will, for now. But I’ll go tomorrow. Or the next day, or the next. And I’ll never forgive you. Never.’

  She flinched.

  His voice softened.‘Pudding? Come on, old girl…?’

  She had lost; each of them knew it. Richard reached for her and pulled her into his arms. Tom watched with still, clear eyes as her brother stroked her hair. She pulled away, her colour high. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing – just wish me luck. Tom and I’ll slip away now. I told Father we were off to a party in town. They won’t expect us back tonight. We’ll be on the boat tomorrow. I’ll send a telegram just before we leave – it’ll be too late for them to stop me then. And no one need ever know that you knew. Allie – please – we mustn’t part bad friends. Not you and I. Won’t you wish me luck?’

  She felt faintly sick. ‘Luck? You make it sound as if you’re off to a cricket match.’

  ‘Of course he does. How else would he make it sound?’ Tom’s voice was back to normal, light and brutal. ‘Now, come on, kiss him goodbye like a good girl and let’s get going.’ He glanced over his shoulder, out of the door.

  Allie clung to Richard. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Of course I will. All this fuss – it’ll probably be all over by the time we get there.’

  ‘It certainly will be if we don’t get a move on.’ Tom stood back and allowed Richard to precede him through the door. Before following him, he paused, looking at Allie who stood very close to him, watching her brother. ‘I’ll look after him,’ he said lightly, and she could not for the life of her tell whether the reassuring note in his voice was honestly meant or mocking. She tilted her head, searching his eyes. For one single moment they stood so. ‘Don’t I get a kiss for luck too?’ he asked then, drily flippant.

  ‘No.’

  The straight mouth turned down in arid amusement and he sketched a sloppy salute. Then he moved, light and fast, after Richard who, after pausing to pick up a couple of bags that had been secreted beneath a shrub, was threading his way through the trees of the orchard towards the garden gate. Neither of them looked back.

  From the lawns behind the house came the tinkling sound of Libby’s laughter and the clatter of teacups.

  Chapter Two

  The bombshell of Richard’s leaving reverberated through the Jordan household like nothing Allie had ever known before. Myra was first incredulous, then quietly and ove
rwhelmingly furious, her anger spurred by her unspoken but heartfelt fear for her son. For days, the other members of the household, each coming to terms with the shock in his or her different way, moved about Ashdown almost on tiptoe; there were grim times when it seemed to Allie that her brother might already have been struck down by a Falangist bullet. Then, as the realization took hold that nothing could be done to bring him back, Myra characteristically erected a wall of cool practicality around her outrage and fear and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, set about discovering the needs of the men who had chosen to fight in Spain.

  Allie had never admired her mother more. For herself, she nursed what she saw as her guilty secret through those fraught weeks and carried it, untold, back with her to school at the start of the new term. Here at St Leonard’s another blow awaited her. She had never been one to court general popularity – her affections tended to be fierce and singular – and all of her schooldays had been shared with one particular friend, Sonia Barton. They had spent their first, miserably homesick days together five years before and had been inseparable companions ever since, though Sonia’s holidays were mostly spent with her parents in the Far East. Now, unexpectedly and at the last moment, Sonia’s mother had decided that she could no longer bear to be parted from her daughter, and Sonia, willy-nilly, had been withdrawn from the school. The letter that awaited Allie bemoaned their parting and swore everlasting friendship. Allie, watching her classmates with their ready-formed allegiances and friendships, swallowed her dismay, resigned herself to a lonely term and wrote a cheerful letter in return.