The Greatcoat (12 page)

A shard of metal had smashed the Perspex and Syd had been cut across the head, which filled his eyes with blood. It took him half a minute to realise he had to wipe it away. Later Laney crawled back with a bandage. They took the mickey out of Syd for days:
Fuck it I’ve gone blind
.

He told her these things and she kept them in her mind. When she heard the engines starting up across the fields she listened. She heard them on the taxiways and she heard them take off but she made a blank of the time between take-off and landing. When she could, she left the farmhouse, went into town and waited for Alec there.

‘If I don’t look after the lodgers, they’ll give notice,’ she told Geoff. He didn’t argue. It was good money the lodgers paid. She’d hired a girl to look after William, on the strength of it.

The other one’s memories swarmed in her head, and then they faded. She was Isabel again. Alec pushed her away from him and looked into her face. She wondered what he saw.

‘I’ll knock on the window. Listen out for me. You remember that day when you wore Syd’s jacket?’ he asked, as if it were long ago.

‘Of course I remember.’

‘As soon as this is over, we’ll go to the coast,’ he said. ‘You and me on the old bike. I know a place where we can go.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said. Time swung and then righted itself. How long ago was it really, since they were together in the hut? To her, it seemed no time at
all
. He had been with her, he had gone, he had come straight back to her. But to him, it was part of their shared history.

It didn’t matter. It could be as long ago as he wanted. She was wasting time, struggling to understand things in a way that wasn’t Alec’s. It didn’t make any difference. He was here, and soon he wouldn’t be. A minute could be a year, if it would take that look off his face.

‘Just think, Issy, if it could always be like it was in the hut, when we didn’t have our watches. As if there wasn’t any time.’

‘But if there wasn’t any time, then I’d never be able to see you.’

He shook his head, smiling as if he knew something she did not. ‘If there wasn’t any time, then you would always be able to see me,’ he said. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? I’ll always come to you.’ He gave her another gentle push. ‘You’ve got to go, or they’ll find me here with a popsy when I should be in the briefing room. They’d take a very dim view of that.
LMF, old boy
.’

The rims of his eyelids were red. ‘LMF?’ she asked.

‘Lack of moral fibre, sweetheart. Gets you carted off to scrub bogs in the back end of beyond. They make sure we know all about LMF.’ He pushed her away again, this time almost angrily.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said, holding his eyes. ‘It’s me, remember?’

He sighed, and pulled her back to him. ‘I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll see you in the morning.’ His voice was sure but his eyes stared past her into the dusky winter afternoon. ‘It gets dark so early now,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. She leaned up and kissed him quickly, by the ear, so that she could not taste him too deeply, want him again, pull him to her and never let him go.

Around them the airfield spread out in dereliction. ‘Look, Alec,’ she said. How much she wanted him to see that everything he feared had ceased to exist. There were no more ops to be flown. There were no Lancs to fly them. The dispersals were empty. The concrete runways and taxiways were broken up and full of weeds. It was all over.

He was looking, but she didn’t know what he saw.

‘
Look
,’ she insisted, but instead he caught her in a close, fierce embrace and she felt herself melting, her mind changing. Again she saw the grey farmhouse, her home, and the green door. Out of sight, a baby was crying, on and on.
My baby
. Isabel jerked herself away from him. ‘
Look
!’ she told him, taking it all in with a sweep of her arm.

‘You know what, Issy, I’m going to try and slip you
past
the guardhouse,’ he replied instead. Now they were walking arm in arm, towards the wide-open entrance. There were brown tufts of last summer’s grass. He propelled her ahead of him through the desertion.

‘There’s no one on guard,’ she said.

‘The boys owe me a few favours,’ he answered.

They were through, inside the airfield. Alec walked briskly.

‘We’re going to the mess,’ he said.

He knew it was impossible. He knew as well as she did that he could never get her past the guardhouse and into the mess. Even wives had to live an hour’s drive from the airfield. He knew it, and so, she guessed, this time he must also see the dereliction that permitted it. He must know that there was no one to challenge him.

They went into the mess, pushing aside the door which hung off its hinges. Others had been here before them. Sections of the lino had been cut up and taken away. There were no tables.

The bar was still there. Alec leaned against it, taking a handful of coins from his pocket. She stared around as he rapped on the counter and ordered their drinks.

‘Not a bad band,’ he said. ‘We’ll dance, shall we, when you’ve finished your drink?’

She watched dead leaves scuffling over the floor. All the windows were broken, and it was as cold in here as it was outside. It smelled of musty earth. Alec stood with her, calm, untroubled by the fact that they had no drinks in their hands. After a while he said, ‘Shall we dance?’

They revolved for a while, to music Isabel couldn’t hear. It was easy enough to follow his lead as he steered her expertly, to avoid the other dancers. After a few minutes, he let go of her. He looked around, his face knitting with anguished bewilderment. She did not even dare, this time, to ask herself what he saw. She dropped her eyes as he struggled to regain his calm.

‘Sorry, darling,’ he said at last, ‘I must press on. Can you find your own way home?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

ISABEL CUT THE
cake and put a slice on Philip’s plate.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ She poured more tea for both of them and sat back. She was so tired. She yawned, stretching her arms and twisting her shoulders luxuriously as a shudder of fatigue went through her.

‘Early bed tonight,’ said Philip. He was getting this clipped way of talking to her. She supposed it came from keeping his surgeries to time when patients grew loquacious. How they must yearn to talk, stuck out on those lonely farms … She shuddered again and her eyes watered.

‘I’ll make some fresh tea,’ she said, getting up, but she stole a look at Philip over her shoulder as she went to the kitchen. He was bent over his slice of cake, cutting it absorbedly. She saw the dark sweep
of
his lashes. ‘No man should have eyelashes like that,’ she’d said to him the second time they went out. Or perhaps it was the third … He’d been surprised. He’d laughed awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure it was a compliment, and she’d felt awkward too. The subject had lapsed. She’d understood then that you couldn’t tell a man to his face that he was handsome. There’d been other awkward moments before Isabel had learned what Philip liked her to say and what he didn’t. She was too impulsive. He liked her to be calm.

What if she turned back to him now and said, ‘Here’s your tea. I spent this afternoon in a hut in the middle of the fields, with another man.’?

‘Isabel has a great deal of imagination,’ one of her school reports had said. ‘She must take care to distinguish between fact and fiction.’ Aunt Jean had frowned over that. She said nothing, but Isabel knew she’d been branded as a liar. The injustice of that report burned in her for years.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ Philip called through.

‘What is it?’

‘Leave all that. Come and have a look.’

He led her through the front door, down the steps and to the car. The street was cold and dark, but when he opened the boot there was enough light from the street lamp for her to see a parcel filling the
space
, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Philip took it out. ‘Here you are,’ he said, and laid it in her arms. It was soft and light. She looked over the bulk of it at Philip, smiling thanks, but at that moment she saw, beyond him, the landlady. Mrs Atkinson stood there with one hand on the railing and one foot on the bottom step. She was watching Isabel and Philip intently.

Isabel had been on the point of pulling off the string to open the parcel, but now she said to Philip, ‘Let’s go inside.’ She raised her voice, so the landlady would hear her, and, sure enough, Mrs Atkinson went quickly up the steps and vanished inside the front door. Philip had noticed none of this.

‘All right,’ he said, a little disappointed. He had liked her eagerness to open his present.

Isabel glanced up the staircase as they came in, but no one was there. Just the usual dank smell of polish, Jeyes Fluid and old food. It seemed so everyday, but she knew it wasn’t so. The house had tricked her before and it wanted to trick her again. She had the sense of a held breath. Something – or someone – was hungry. Their hunger wanted to grip Isabel and pull her in.

‘Lock the door, Philip,’ she said when they were back in the flat. ‘I left it on the latch.’

But the landlady had a key. What if Philip were to
fix
a bolt on the inside of their door? Isabel knelt by the hearth with the parcel. Carefully, she undid the string, rolled it up and unfolded the paper. Philip stood by, looking down on her as if she were a child opening her Christmas presents under the tree. A puffy mass of silk swelled out of the wrapping. It was an eiderdown, covered in roses and trellises of leaves.

‘I thought it would keep you warm,’ he said.

The eiderdown expanded, pushing itself free. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘I had to go all the way to York,’ he said proudly.

‘You were in York today?’

‘Yes. I had to tell you a white lie, I’m afraid, Is, when I said I’d be out making calls.’

‘
Oh
… Did you go on your own?’

‘What an extraordinary question. Of course I did. Who on earth would I go with to buy an eiderdown?’

‘Fancy you having a secret.’

‘A nice secret, I hope. I had to order it. You won’t be cold now.’

‘No.’ She folded the eiderdown carefully, lifted it, and took it through to their bedroom. It billowed, unwieldy, as she spread it out. The roses were bigger and redder than any rose she’d ever seen. They rioted over the bed.

‘It looks very cosy,’ said Philip from the door.

‘Yes, it does. It was very clever of you, Phil. Thank you.’

It was hideous. She could smoke in bed and set fire to it, perhaps.

‘I’ll leave you in a bed of roses in the mornings,’ he said, rather sentimentally. Philip never talked like this – what had come over him? Isabel busied herself with tucking in the sheets and patting everything smooth. But it was no good. Her hands hated the silky, insinuating touch of the eiderdown. She stood up and said, ‘There’s a good play on the wireless tonight. Let’s listen in.’

‘Have you noticed something?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘She’s gone quiet. Her upstairs,’ he said humorously, jerking his head in the direction of the ceiling.

‘But you said you couldn’t hear her.’

‘Once or twice; nobody could help it. But there hasn’t been a peep out of her for days. At night, I mean.’

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ said Isabel.

‘We’ll be out of here soon,’ he said in a rush, as if he were making her a promise.

‘I know we will.’

‘It’ll be just the two of us then. There’ll be no one to interfere.’

She looked at him sharply, but his face was
innocent
of suspicion. All he meant was that they wouldn’t have to answer to a landlady once they had a place of their own.

The whole weight of the house seemed to press down on her. She was afraid again. Alec’s words echoed in her head, but now they were more than a promise: I’ll knock on the window. Swear you won’t go to sleep. She saw his eyes on her. Her heart clenched at the remembered expression on his face. He was outside in the dark and the wind, staring in at the warm, lit world. Whatever happened, she knew that Alec would come for her, and she would slip into that other life again, her mind clouded with memories that weren’t hers, her body moving to rhythms it had learned elsewhere. Nothing on earth could stop him from coming, or her from becoming that other woman, once he was there. There was no one strong enough to hold her back.

If she told Philip, he’d think she was mad. That would be dangerous. Philip would have the medical profession on his side if he decided that she needed treatment. She could imagine how his face would change. He wouldn’t see her as Isabel any more, his wife, the one he loved. His expression would be a doctor’s, full of concern and impersonal pity.

He could have her locked away. She knew what that meant. She and Charlie used to watch the
crocodile
of inmates from Burleigh Hospital, on the rare occasions when they were allowed out of the grounds. Women as old as her aunt wore ankle socks, clumsy sandals and shapeless cotton print dresses, with no belts. They looked like big, deformed children. Her aunt had said, ‘They used not to let them out at all. Perhaps it was kinder that way.’

Or, worse, Philip might think: Isabel has behaved like a tart and now she’s trying to get round me by pretending to be a madwoman.

A shutter would come down and he would never trust her again. She knew him well enough to understand that it wasn’t a question of forgiveness; he wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of her.

‘Yes,’ she said aloud, ‘just the two of us.’

It was too warm under the eiderdown. She longed to push it off, but didn’t dare. The dark hours wore on. There was a wind that spattered rain on the bedroom window. The house creaked under its buffeting, but Philip didn’t stir. Upstairs, too, it was silent. The greatcoat, folded up by Philip, lay on the bedroom chair. She was safe under Philip’s eiderdown, but she lay there rigid with effort, struggling against the desire prickling in her limbs. She longed to creep out of bed, snatch up the greatcoat and cradle it in her
arms
like a living thing, before spreading it out on her side of the bed and waiting, waiting …