A Fragile Peace Read online

  And so it was to her father that she at last, three long months after Richard’s leaving, found herself confiding the secret that had haunted her waking and sleeping hours.

  He looked at her, a faint furrow between his straight, dark brows. ‘You knew?’

  She nodded miserably.

  They were walking in the grounds of St Leonard’s, the late November air damp and iron-cold. Patches of yellow mist wreathed the desolate woodlands and floated over the waters of the lake, making the small island in the centre a faint, mysterious smudge in the growing darkness. The sky was dull and heavy, and light was seeping from the afternoon very fast. Behind them, cresting the rising parkland, the school – a Queen Anne mansion with sprawling modern additions – glowed with light and warmth, a refuge of familiarity in the oddly primeval chill of the afternoon. Allie pushed her hands deeper into her pockets and buried her chin in her scarf, not looking at her father.

  ‘Just before they left. Daddy, honestly, there was nothing I could do. I’ve been over and over it in my head. He said that if I told he’d just wait and go another time. He said he’d never forgive me—’ A movement of the cold air made her shiver suddenly. She hunched her wide shoulders. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’ The words were as dreary as the landscape.

  Robert Jordan stopped walking. His daughter took another step and then also stopped, turning to face him. In a familiar, loving gesture he lifted his arm and, thankfully, she slipped beneath it, allowing the comfort of his embrace to ease her sore heart. ‘What if something happens to him?’ Her voice was muffled; the agonizing thoughts which had pursued each other around her brain like rats in a cage were not easy to put into words. ‘What if he’s k-killed? Or crippled? It’ll be my fault, won’t it? If I’d told you – if I’d said something…?’ She gulped air awkwardly. He laid his face against the thick wavy hair that swung across her eyes, grazing her cheekbone. His eyes were tender.

  ‘Listen to me.’ She had always loved his voice. It was gentle and cultured, always warm. He paused for a moment, marshalling his thoughts. ‘Richard is a man. He may not always act like one – which of us ever does?’ In her self-centred misery, she missed the rueful note of irony in that. ‘But a man nevertheless. He must be allowed to make his own decisions, and learn then to stick to those decisions. If he chooses to go to war, as men have so often chosen before…’ For a fraction of a second, Robert Jordan hesitated; blood, barbed wire, the deaths of friends hovering in a nightmare that was now almost twenty years old – ‘If that’s what he chooses, then I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to prevent him. Oh, I know he’s under age,’ he added in reply to her small, protesting movement, ‘and if you had told us, then, yes, I suppose we could have stopped him. But by what means and for how long? If he’s half the lad I hope he is—’ his arm about her tightened and he half-laughed, quietly, into her hair ‘—if he’s half the lad that I suspect you are yourself – then nothing that you, I or the devil might have done could have stopped him.’

  ‘You forgot to mention Mother,’ she said, and was not aware until she said it of the faint twist of humour. She smiled lopsidedly. ‘I didn’t mean…’

  ‘I know what you meant. But no, I don’t think even she could have stopped him. This way was the best, my love, believe me. If we’d forced him to escape us, he might have enlisted under another name and we might never have found him, never have heard from him. At least now he writes. We can keep in touch. We’ll know…’ the pause was infinitesimal, but telling ‘…when he’s coming home.’

  It had not been what he had intended to say. Allie’s mind supplied the words with cruel clarity: We’ll know if he’s killed. She squeezed her eyes tightly together, forcing the tears back. Her father held her for an instant longer, then, gently, he put her from him and they turned and walked on.

  ‘He hates it, doesn’t he?’ she asked, after a moment in which the only sound was their footsteps on the rotting carpet of wet leaves that covered the ground and the dreary sound of water dripping from the melancholy trees. ‘Don’t you feel it? He doesn’t say so in so many words, I know, but it’s there. All that silly bravado – rah, rah for the chaps and what a jolly good show. He hates it.’

  Her father said nothing. Then ‘It isn’t always easy,’ he said quietly, ‘to take the right decision at the right time.’ He was not looking at her but into the shrouding mist ahead. His dark, firm profile was outlined against the dull sheen of the winter waters of the lake. ‘We all find ourselves influenced by circumstances, emotion – passion, even, rather than logic. It’s a failing I’m afraid that isn’t uniquely characteristic of the young.’ Once again her inexperienced ears missed the thread of bitter irony in the words. Her normally acute senses were blinded and deafened by her own feelings of guilt and anxiety. ‘I think you’re right,’ her father continued. ‘I think he hates it. I’m not surprised that he does.’ Again, faintly, the rumble of a bombardment, the swish and howl of a flying shell. He passed a hand across his face.

  ‘He will be all right, won’t he?’ Allie knew the stupidity of the question the moment she had blurted it, heard the childishness of it in the uncontrolled lift of her voice. She bit her lip. The years shifted like the November mists, and she was a small girl pleading for reassurance about whatever disaster threatened her safe world – a broken toy, a pet with a hurt foot – saying, ‘He will be all right, Daddy, won’t he?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she said now abruptly. ‘That was ridiculous.’

  Her father laid an arm across her shoulders as they walked.

  ‘You aren’t mad at me then? You don’t think I could have stopped him?’ she asked.

  ‘I think you did exactly the right thing. I just wish you’d talked to me about it earlier and saved yourself a lot of worry.’

  She scuffed a pile of leaves with her foot. ‘Mother’s taken it very well, hasn’t she?’

  He smiled, his eyes warm. ‘How else would you expect her to take it? Your mother is not only the best wife a man could have – she’s the most practical. I have never known her to create a fuss about anything that she felt could not be altered. She is at present engaged in organizing some of the ladies of the village to collect for parcels for Richard and his fellows-in-arms. She writes him long, entertaining letters full of happy nothings. On the day that he comes home, having first ascertained that he’s hale and undamaged, she’ll probably hang, draw and quarter him.’

  Allie smiled a little, then sobered.

  They walked on until they came to a small clearing beside the lake, a stretch of open bank with a shingle beach which was used for swimming in the summer. It was hard to believe now, Allie thought, looking at the still darkness of the water and feeling the bite of the air on her face, that she had run, laughing, into the water just a few months before at this very spot. Suddenly and inexplicably she felt a wave of sadness. It was as if her childhood had fled from her, leaving her bereft, in limbo, dreadfully vulnerable.

  ‘Let’s sit for a bit.’ There was a huge fallen tree by the water’s edge that had been worn completely smooth by its use as a seat. Allie perched upon it, her legs swinging, her heels catching in the dead undergrowth. Her father leaned beside her, his long legs crossed, his eyes narrowed against the worsening visibility, scanning the still waters of the lake.

  Allie bent her head and watched her swinging feet; her sensible school brogues were stained dark with water, her thick, mud-coloured stockings splashed and snagged. ‘When I leave school,’ she said apparently inconsequentially, ‘I’m never going to wear lisle stockings again.’

  Robert Jordan smiled slightly and waited.

  She took a deep breath. The cold air was sharp in her lungs. ‘Talking of which…’ Her quiet voice seemed lost in the waterlogged, shadowy quiet. She glanced sideways at her father.

  ‘… that’s the other thing you wanted to talk to me about,’ he finished for her.

  She nodded.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Mother doesn’t want me to go to u
niversity.’

  ‘No. She doesn’t.’

  ‘And you? How do you feel about it?’

  He took a long thoughtful breath. ‘I honestly don’t know. I’m not trying to dodge the issue, love, truly I’m not. I don’t know. As you know, your mother and I have always had the understanding that with regard to the education and upbringing of yourself and your sister she has the final say, and I have always allowed myself to be guided by her. It may be old-fashioned, but up to now it has worked. I would ask you to consider this: it is against your own interests to dismiss your mother’s opinions without thought. She is a perceptive and extremely intelligent person, and she has your best interests at heart at all times.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘She is rarely motivated by anything other than that she believes that she knows what is best for you. She cares for you deeply. She cares for all of us deeply.’ There was an unfathomable note in his gentle voice. ‘I shouldn’t like to do anything – I shouldn’t like any of us to do anything – that might hurt her. Not at the moment. Not after Richard. Now having said that, let me say that my greatest desire is to see you happy. If you’ve absolutely set your heart on going, if you’re completely certain that it would be right for you, then I’ll do my best. All I ask is that you consider carefully before we take up the cudgels and wade into a fight that might take a good deal out of both of us.’ The last words were said with that wry twist of humour that Allie so loved in her father. She smiled in acknowledgement of it.

  A water bird skimmed from the opaline sky and landed on the lake, sending darkly silvered ripples across the quiet surface to lap at their feet. Allie fought one last battle with herself, weighing and measuring cause and effect in her mind. Then she sighed. The moment had come.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’ve decided that I don’t really want to go.’

  He looked at her sharply.

  She shrugged. ‘I probably wouldn’t get in anyway.’ She broke off a piece of bark and tossed it into the water, watching the pattern of its movement as if it were the most absorbing thing in the world. ‘It was a pretty stupid idea really.’ Her heart was thumping in awful, joyous liberation. She sensed her father’s relief, his gratitude that unpleasantness and friction had been avoided, that he would not now be forced to take sides with someone he loved dearly against someone, Allie was certain, that he loved even more. She felt the familiar, tranquil glow of warmth that always came when she indulged her own eagerness to please the people about her. In her more mordant moments, she despised herself for it. She jumped from the tree, brushing her coat down. ‘That’s that settled then.’

  Her father did not move. ‘Allie, are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But there is something else…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to that dreary finishing place that Libby went to. I don’t want to go to Switzerland. You won’t make me, will you?’ They both knew that the pronoun was a euphemistic courtesy and that Allie was referring to her mother.

  Her father considered for a long moment. ‘Well, that seems fair to me. If you’re really set against it.’

  ‘Do you think you could explain to Mother? I’m not sure she’ll understand.’

  ‘Of course I can. And of course she will.’ His quick smile flashed again. ‘Though it does seem strange, my love. Most girls, I’m given to believe, would give their eye teeth for such an opportunity…’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ she said, a real note of regret in her voice, ‘I don’t seem to be “most girls”.’

  ‘Libby had a wonderful time—’

  ‘I’m not Libby, either.’

  ‘That’s true.’ The words were a small conspiracy between them, compounded by their exchanged, smiling look.

  Allie tucked her hand into her father’s pocket as they turned to stroll back to the school, and snuggled close to him. ‘She’s coming down next Sunday, did you know? She and Celia. They’re treating me to tea.’

  A long time later she was to remember that it was at that exact moment that her father caught his foot in an exposed tree root and stumbled a little. As he recovered, he spoke neither of her sister nor of her sister’s friend. ‘Tell me – if you’ve decided after all not to try for university, and if you don’t want to go to Switzerland – what do you want to do?’

  She was not quite prepared for that. There was a small silence. She took a breath. ‘I’d like to get a job.’ She spoke very quickly, not looking at him.

  ‘A job? For heaven’s sake – what sort of a job?’ He could not quite keep the astonishment from his voice.

  She lifted her shoulders. ‘Well – I’m not sure. I haven’t quite thought that far.’

  ‘I see.’ He considered for a moment, with the thought and care that she loved so much in him. ‘Well, I must say that we hadn’t quite anticipated …’ He paused. ‘Were you thinking of Jordan’s? I daresay I could—’

  ‘No.’ She squeezed his hand inside his pocket to compensate for the sharpness of the word. How in heaven’s name to explain how she felt? The compulsion to do something, to be part of a world that she sensed but did not know? ‘I don’t mean to be awkward, honestly, but I don’t want to be the boss’s daughter, playing at being a working girl, marking time until a nice, suitable young man asks me to marry him—’

  Her father glanced down at her, eyebrows raised, but said nothing.

  ‘—I need something of my own. Something away from the family. You do understand, don’t you?’

  In the silence, from the direction of the mist-wreathed playing fields came the faint sounds of shouts, and laughter.

  ‘I – think so.’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it yet. I know I can’t expect much – jobs don’t grow on trees nowadays. But I’d like to try. On my own. I wondered – well – my French is passable, and my German’s still very good, thanks to Aunt Margaret and Uncle Otto—’ She broke off. ‘How are they by the way?’ Her mother’s sister and her German husband, with whom she and Richard had spent many a happy summer in Germany, had recently settled in England, unable to accept any longer the tainted brutality of Nazi rule.

  ‘They’re fine. I’ve found a place for him in Coventry.’

  ‘I’m so glad they got out. I’d hate anything to happen to them. Those holidays that Richard and I spent with them were so very happy…’ she paused. ‘… It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? What’s happening over there, I mean. I like the German people. They’ve never seemed any different to us, the ones I’ve met. How can they have let that little monster take them over the way they have? And when you think of Spain – it’s terrible to think that some of the German boys we met – the Mullers, the Zimmermans – might actually be bombing Richard…’

  They strolled on in pensive silence.

  ‘It’ll be all right, then?’ she asked at last. ‘About my going to work, I mean. If I can find something.’

  ‘Of course it will. I’ll speak to your mother, and we’ll talk about it properly when you come home at Christmas.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But one thing I absolutely insist upon.’ He waited until she looked at him, held her eyes with his. ‘I know you, my girl. I’m not having any hare-brained schemes about working in a sweat shop or a factory, just to find out what it’s like. I have the last say in this, and that’s final.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said, meekly.

  Her tone drew his smile. ‘You see what happens when you get old? You start to order people about—’

  That made her laugh outright, knowing his small conceit, knowing that no one, least of all himself, could seriously think of her father as old. ‘Crumpets for tea?’ she asked. ‘In front of the fire in my room?’

  ‘Do you promise to burn them?’

  ‘To a cinder.’ It was a standing joke in the family that her father liked his crumpets practically incinerated. ‘I built the fire up specially.’

  ‘Then what
are we waiting for?’

  As they strode through the gathering darkness towards the welcoming lights of the school, Allie felt suddenly like singing at the top of her voice. It was as if, with the load that her confession had lifted from her heart and a decision about her future taken, a leaden weight had been lifted from her. Life, which had seemed as oppressive and dark as the winter weather, beckoned now with rainbow fingers. She skipped a little to keep up with her father’s long-legged stride. He grinned at her and reached for her hand. Laughing like children they ran together the last twenty yards of the gravelled drive.

  * * *

  On Sunday, as promised, Libby and Celia came to take Allie out to tea.

  ‘Darling!’ In her swirling, cherry-red coat, a matching bright beret perched on the side of her silver-blonde head, Libby looked as out of place in the swarming corridors of St Leonard’s as a bird of paradise in a suburban garden. ‘What a lark! We missed one train, and then got on the wrong one – I just utterly forgot my way to this dead-and-alive hole, would you believe it? In the end we had to take a hired car. Well, come on, darling, aren’t you ready yet? We’re supposed to be taking you out to tea, remember? Even got the Buzzer’s permission for it.’ Gracelessly she pouched her cheeks and lowered her delicate brows in passable imitation of Miss Busby, the school’s principal. ‘“Why, Elizabeth,”’ she boomed, ‘“I do declare that Switzerland must have been good for you after all. I never thought the day would come when you would ask my permission to do anything.”’ She pulled a face. ‘Old bag. I warned Celia about her. And wasn’t she every bit as bad as I said?’ she asked.