The Greatcoat (14 page)

‘I know,’ she said over and over, trying to get to where he was, but he said, ‘You don’t,’ and brushed her hand away.

She woke to the noise of Lancs. They were taking off at two-minute intervals. The wind must have changed because they were close to the town as they circled to gain altitude before they headed south-east. One and then another and then another and then another. The air filled and rumbled with their thunder. They were almost over the house, so low that if she could look up through the roof and then the fuselage she would see Alec with his flight engineer just behind him and to his right. And the huge pregnant Lanc with its bellyful of bombs passed over.

He’d gone. This was the twenty-seventh op. This one and three more to go until the end of the tour. It had begun. Alec had climbed out of the crack of time where he met Isabel over and over again, between the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh op. The crew of poor old bloody Katie were off on their trip to the big city.

* * *

She had to go out to the airfield. Philip wouldn’t be home yet, perhaps not until morning. Quickly she dressed and scribbled a note: ‘Couldn’t sleep, darling, gone out for a breath of fresh air.’ She grabbed the torch that hung by the door in case of power cuts, and bent to lace her stout walking shoes. She was about to take her coat from the stand when she paused. After a moment’s thought she took the greatcoat from the bed, put it on and fastened it. It was too big and came down almost to her ankles. There would be no one to see it, and it would keep her warm.

She spread margarine onto kitchen paper and greased the bolt on the front door of the house. It slid back easily. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her, very gently. There was almost no sound, but even so she waited, tense, listening. Nothing stirred and no lights came on upstairs. She crept down the steps. The street lamp had been turned off and no lights showed at any windows, but there was a moon, half full, with thin clouds racing over it.

‘It’s the blackout,’ said Isabel to herself, and everything made perfect sense. There was enough moonlight to see her way: she wouldn’t need her torch. She saw other, shadowy figures scurrying along, close to the walls, as if they were afraid. No one spoke to her or even glanced in her direction.

She turned the way she knew, which led to open country. Soon the houses and the bulk of the minster had fallen behind her. The country lane was wide, and freshly Tarmacked. She kept to its edge. A couple of times, lorries pounded past her, towards the airfield. She walked as fast as she could, keeping herself from breaking into a run. Her heart thudded with terrible urgency. She had to get there quickly but she didn’t know why. Now the moon shone on the hedges and through the gates she saw wide fields. The landscape was bluish, thickly shadowed. A vixen screamed and Isabel jumped, even though she knew what it was. She wanted to be silent, a shadow, unnoticed. She paused to rest against a tree, and propped herself there, waiting. She knew it wasn’t time yet. Hours must pass before the first bomber returned. She was folded into the night, waiting, wrapped inside the greatcoat.

She was at the perimeter fence. She knew that it was long after midnight. Now, in the winter darkness, the whole base was alive. A Lanc was taxiing in from the runway to dispersal. A crew bus jolted down the perimeter road in front of her, its engine mute against the thunder of the Lanc. For an instant she caught the profile of the Waaf who was driving. Ground crew swarmed as sound swelled in the distance again. There was more than one Lanc up there. They were in the
circuit
, waiting their turn to land. They were coming down the staircase of the sky, descending one by one towards the airfield. The thunder of them went through her, and she looked up, thinking she saw a vast shadow against the darkness of the sky. The control tower blinked. She saw the aircraft’s landing lights as it came down the sky towards her, then it dipped towards the runway lights, bounced, settled and was down. The ground shook to its incoming roar.

Again and again the sky thickened with engines. One by one the Lancasters came in and taxied to dispersal. Crew buses passed her and she thought of the men hunched over their cigarettes, on the way to debriefing. She tried to think that Alec was among them, but the knot in her stomach wouldn’t ease.

Now it was quieter. A straggler came in, and then another. She waited, tense with fear. He had to come now. There was only so much fuel and so many more minutes in the air. Unless he’d diverted – unless K-Katie was damaged – unless …

She couldn’t see clearly. She blinked, but the fog wouldn’t lift. It was rolling in from the east, great bales of it like wool, hiding the runway then swirling away again. Those bloody Met bods, she heard in her head. Got it wrong again.

They would tell him. He would abort the landing, go round, head for another airfield.

She heard it lumbering down the sky. It sounded all wrong. It was a Lanc but the engines weren’t making the safe Merlin roar she would know anywhere, in her sleep even. They were jagging at the air, trying to cut through it, coughing, stuttering, and then suddenly they bellowed as if the pilot had forgotten to switch off the superchargers and the Lanc was coming down too fast, too steep, too close.

A brilliant light came on at the end of the runway. ‘It’s the chance light,’ she said aloud. She knew what that was for. He had got to land and so they were giving him the light that was strong enough to burn through the fog. He hadn’t enough fuel to reach another airfield, or else there was too much damage. The fog swirled clear and for a second she saw lights, figures and then the vast wallowing shadow of the Lanc as it swooped for the runway. But it would not go down. The engines screamed as the thing passed over her, fifty feet above her head. He had missed the runway. He was pushing the throttles forward as far as they would go, trying to get power, trying to lift her over the admin block and the hangars. The black thing clawed at the sky, went up, hung there roaring, then stuttered, stalled and plunged out of sight beyond the airfield.

There was absolute silence. She didn’t think she heard the explosion. The air around her gathered
itself
, solidified, became a wall. It pulsed, breaking against her body again and again. She was falling forward. She was on the ground, with her face in wet grass.

WHEN SHE REACHED
the house, there was no car outside. Philip must still be with the patient. She looked up and down the street. It was the same night, still going on endlessly. No one was about.

She let herself in quietly, and blinked in the sudden light. The landlady was sitting on the stairs. She looked up at Isabel, seeing her fully this time, her gaze sharp. She looked tired, but somehow satisfied. Like a cat, thought Isabel, that knows it has killed and will not be hungry for a while.

‘It’s done, then,’ said the landlady.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Isabel folded her arms. You won’t get away with that, she thought. She was bold now, and she could ask what she wanted, because no one else would ever know.

‘Was he killed?’ she asked.

‘Of course he was killed. They were all killed.’

‘All the crew?’

The landlady’s top lip lifted, showing her teeth. ‘I’m not talking about them,’ she said.

‘Then who are you talking about?’

‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed. Don’t bother waiting up, he won’t come back. And you can take off that coat. It doesn’t belong to you.’

Isabel looked down at herself. Of course, she was still wearing the greatcoat. ‘It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you,’ she said. The landlady got up stiffly, banged her hands together, turned and went upstairs. She didn’t look back.

It was quarter to seven. There was no point in going to bed now. And Philip still not home … Fear gnawed at her. He knew everything, and he had left her. He had found himself somewhere else to live. He would never come back to her. She sat at the table, too tired to make a cup of tea or light the fire. Slowly, a late winter dawn crept to the windows. In a minute she would take off the greatcoat and fall into sleep, and everything that had happened would disappear, like the substance of a dream. She knew that the landlady was right, and Alec would not come back. Why should he? He had done everything he had come to do.
I’m not talking about them
, the landlady had
said
. So there was something else, Isabel thought, and I must find it out.

When the telephone rang, her hand went to it smoothly. It was Philip, sleepy and apologetic. The child’s condition had deteriorated, and he had been at the hospital. It had been so late that they had made up a camp-bed for him; he hadn’t wanted to disturb Isabel. He might as well go straight to surgery, and he would be home at lunchtime, he promised. He had the afternoon off. They could go out for a drive, he thought, into the country. Would she like that?

‘Yes,’ she said, clutching the receiver close. ‘I’d like that.’

She slept for a couple of hours, then dressed carefully, brushed her hair and coiled it into a chignon. She applied powder and dark-red lipstick. Now she looked older, and firm of purpose. She was a doctor’s wife, in her tweed coat, busy and preoccupied. She pinned on her hat, picked up her shopping list and basket, and walked through the hall without glancing up at the landing.

Nothing could frighten her today. She went past the little groups of gossiping women in the marketplace, without a tremor. She pointed out the bruised apple that the stall-keeper was about to slip into her
bag
. The butcher looked at her, and put down the fatty chops he had been about to weigh out for her. She didn’t care what they thought of her any more, and they knew it.

‘My dear!’ It was Janet Ingoldby. She took Isabel’s arm as if they were the oldest of friends. ‘I heard that you weren’t well.’

‘I’m perfectly well.’

‘They say that the cobbler’s child is never shod.’ Janet’s smile was kind, but curious. ‘We must make sure that Philip looks after you.’

‘He looks after me very well,’ said Isabel coolly.

‘Of course.’ The other woman hesitated. She feels it too, thought Isabel. She knows that she can’t get at me any more.

‘I’m going to give French conversation lessons at the grammar school,’ Isabel said aloud. ‘A few hours a week, to keep my hand in.’

‘Philip said you had lived abroad.’

‘I went to Bordeaux with a French family, when I was nineteen. They wanted their children to learn English.’

‘How brave of your mother to let you go!’

‘Not really,’ said Isabel. ‘She was dead.’

‘Oh my dear, I’m so sorry, I had no idea, Philip never said …’

‘It’s not a secret. My parents were in Singapore
when
it fell, and they were captured by the Japanese. She almost survived; she didn’t die until 1945. It was terribly bad luck,’ said Isabel, looking straight at Janet Ingoldby, daring her to say any of the things people said.

Janet Ingoldby took a step back, and her hand dropped from Isabel’s arm. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘The war …’ and she shook her head, looking down.

Isabel, too, looked down, her anger spent. What did she know of Janet or what she might have suffered? You were angry, she told herself, because of the way she kept saying ‘Philip’. You wanted to pay her back.

‘It was a long time ago,’ Isabel said.

‘I know. But some things never seem to stop happening, do they?’ said Janet Ingoldby quietly. A shutter lifted, and for a second her grey eyes were clear and penetrating. ‘You must look after yourself,’ she said. The shutter fell again, and she said busily, ‘Well, I must be going. Mrs Daniels needs more Cardinal Red for the kitchen floor. Why she never tells me when she knows it’s about to run out, I can’t think …’

Isabel knew where to go now. As she’d hoped, there were no other customers in the grocer’s. The grocer’s
wife
was sorting broken biscuits from whole, and she looked up with a flattering smile when she saw Isabel. Isabel took out her list and laid it on the counter.

‘Will you have your order sent?’

‘No, I’ll wait. There’s nothing heavy.’

The woman seemed glad of her custom today. Soon she was rattling away with her stories as she reached for a packet of tea, and then went over to the bacon machine. Isabel sat on the stool provided, and began to steer the conversation. They moved easily through food shortages, back to rationing and the war.

‘I heard that one of the bombers coming back from Germany crashed at the airfield,’ said Isabel. The grocer’s wife turned to her, one hand still on the slicer, her face lit with an extraordinary blend of disbelief, relish for drama, and satisfaction at being the one to tell the story.

‘She’s not told you then.’

‘Who?’

‘Your landlady. Well, it’s no wonder, I’d keep quiet about it if I were her. She calls herself Mrs Atkinson these days, but her married name was Bardsley. She used to live out at Stainthorpe, at the farm there. It’s no more than a mile from the airfield, if it’s that. Her husband and the babby were in the farmhouse that night, when one of the aircraft tried to land in the fog. It was coming back from a raid on Berlin, they
said
, and it had flak damage to the engines. It came right down on the farmhouse. Ploughed it into the ground. You can still see the scar.’

‘Was it a Lancaster?’

‘It was all Lancasters here, barring a few Halifaxes. Hallibags they called them. My friend was working nights in the officers’ mess and she heard it come down. They all thought it was going to hit the buildings. She threw herself on the floor – she thought she was bound to die – but it went over. And then they were thinking he’s cleared it, he’s cleared it – and then everything went still. She said the explosion seemed to come ever so long after. Every soul in that farmhouse was killed – but
she
was in town. She had the same house then, you know, the one you’re in at the minute. Her auntie left it to her, and she took lodgers. There was always people wanting somewhere to live. But she had two rooms on the ground floor for herself. The tale was, she was looking after the lodgers.’ The grocer’s wife was leaning right over the counter now and her eyes were bright. ‘There was a lot went on in the war, with the men away for years on end, and you had to turn a blind eye, but even so –
her
man wasn’t away. He was in a reserved occupation. She would stay over, you know, in town. She was fawce, she was. Her husband had no idea what was going on, apparently.’