The Greatcoat Read online

  Isabel fetched one of the dining chairs, kicked off her slippers and clambered onto it. She could reach into the top cupboard, but she couldn’t see inside it properly. She felt the hard edges of Philip’s books. But as she reached around, her hands met space where she’d expected a wall. The cupboard was bigger than it appeared from the outside, and L-shaped. It went back deep into the wall, but she couldn’t reach so far. Philip would have pushed everything right to the back.

  Isabel took out three of the thickest textbooks, climbed off her chair and piled the books onto the seat. She tested them with her hand to see if they would slide when she stood on them. They were not very stable, but she’d always had good balance. If only she had the torch, but it was on Philip’s bedside table, beside the telephone, in case he had a call in the night. He could get up almost without waking Isabel.

  She steadied herself carefully on the pile of books, gripping the edge of the cupboard. Now she could reach inside. Her hand entered space, brushed the sides of the cupboard and came out smeared with cobwebs. She still couldn’t reach right around the corner, where Philip would have shoved whatever else was up there, in order to fit in his books. Yes, it was exactly the kind of place where a woman like Mrs Atkinson would hide things …

  Isabel rose on tiptoe and clung to a shelf as the chair rocked. Any moment she could come crashing down. But if she could get just a little more height she would be able to feel right to the back of it—

  Her hand touched cloth. There was something there, just as Philip had said. Cunning Mrs Atkinson hadn’t been quite cunning enough, thought Isabel in triumph. But whatever it was, it was still too far back and she couldn’t quite pull it forward. One more book ought to do it. She swung herself down, hefted a tome on surgical procedure onto her pile and clambered up again.

  She was there. Her hand seized a thick fold of cloth and pulled the thing towards her. It came at her in a rush and was in her arms, almost toppling her backwards. How was she to get down with it? She couldn’t climb down safely with her arms full … but if she bent her knees and jumped sideways, it was really only a few feet down to the floor. She was less likely to hurt herself in a jump than a fall.

  The dust flew as Isabel jumped. The jar went through her knees and spine as she landed but she did not topple over. She was on the ground, and the bundle fell open, spreading itself on the floor. She crouched, listening for Philip, in case the noise had woken him. Silence.

  It was a coat. An RAF officer’s greatcoat, she saw at once, recognising it with a thud of memory. There was the heavy, slatey grey-blue wool, the buttons, the belt with its heavy brass buckle. It had been folded up for a long time, she thought. There was cobweb on the outside but when she unfolded it, the cloth was clean. It was so heavy. The coat felt stiff without a body to shape and warm it. She would shake out the dust and then brush it down.

  Isabel went lightly to the door of the flat, unlocked it and was in the hall, carrying the coat. But the front door was locked and bolted. She would make too much noise opening it, she decided. The house was very still but she glanced behind her, fearing that upstairs the landlady might have opened her door noiselessly and be standing there on the landing. This was just the kind of thing she would have been waiting for all those days and nights: evidence of wrongdoing by her tenants.

  Isabel returned to the flat, unfastened the big sash window in the living room and pushed it up. A flood of freezing air surrounded her. She lifted the heavy coat, bundled it over the sill and let it out into the night. She flapped and shook it, making the dust fly off into the darkness. It was so heavy. It pulled as if it would tug itself free. She held it tight with one hand and beat it with the other, beating out of it the mustiness of the cupboard which had imprisoned it for so long.

  When the greatcoat was back in the room Isabel held it close, up to her face, and for the first time breathed in the smell of it. There was a dry reek of mothballs, and old, woollen cloth. But there was also a faint, acrid tang of burning, and then a smell which flooded Isabel with her childhood. Long grass; sweet hay; the prickle of stalks on the back of her bare legs as she lay and looked up into the vast, polished East Anglian sky. She heard the drowsy chirr of crickets, and the skirl of skylarks. She lay there hidden, like a hare in its form. She was perfectly happy. Far off another noise began: deep, thunderous. She knew that they were testing the engines.

  Slowly, Isabel lifted her head and came back to the room. It was impossible that a greatcoat bundled away in a cupboard for years could smell of summer fields.

  It must belong to the landlady. She wouldn’t want Isabel to have found it, or why hide it so carefully? Perhaps she’d put it away and forgotten about it.

  The coat would be so warm. Even now its heavy wool shielded Isabel from the chill of the room. Suddenly, without giving herself time to think, Isabel untied the cord of Philip’s dressing gown. Underneath it she was naked. She slipped her arms into the coat and put it on. It settled around her, falling into heavy folds. It was much too big for her, but she’d known that it would be. She was lost in it. Her bare feet stuck out palely. She fingered the buttons and stroked her hand down the texture of the cloth. Warm as the coat was, she shivered, and, as quickly as she had put it on, Isabel stripped it off again. She picked Philip’s dressing gown off the floor, pulled it on and tied the cord tightly.

  All this while, Philip slept. She went to the door that led through into the bedroom. Light fell on the bed, but he did not stir. She felt her heart tighten, as if he were a child, sleeping there in his innocence, oblivious to the light, to the noise of the coat falling, to Isabel herself. She crept closer to the bedside. His face looked carved in stillness. She could barely hear him breathe. He had flung up one arm behind his head and he lay on his back, occupying the bed as if Isabel had no place in it, or in his dreams. The telephone squatted beside him blackly, like a toad. If it rang, she knew his eyes would snap open and he would begin to speak sensibly, professionally, asking questions, listening intently, almost before he could have begun to think. It was a miracle to her how Philip could come back to himself, shrugging away the place of sleep that too often held Isabel like a hostage, even in the middle of the day.

  She stood watching him for a long time, half fearing that her gaze would wake him, half afraid that it would not. At last she spread the coat on her side of the bed, laying claim to it. As if he felt its touch, Philip stirred and rolled away from her and from the greatcoat. He was on his side, still sleeping, with an armful of blanket heaved over his shoulder.

  The lino was icy. She shouldn’t have left her slippers in the other room. Shuddering, Isabel eased her cold self between the sheets. The greatcoat came down over her, moulding itself to her, pressing her into the mattress.

  She woke with light in her eyes like splinters. Philip had pulled the curtains back and was standing by the window, fixing his cufflinks.

  ‘You brute,’ grumbled Isabel.

  ‘It’s ten to eight. I’m off in a minute. What is that thing on the bed?’

  ‘I found it in the cupboard. I was freezing.’

  He came close and peered at it. ‘Good lord. Where on earth has that come from?’

  Isabel recognised the echo of Dr Ingoldby’s voice and phrasing. Philip was going up in the world, she thought to herself, and then quenched the thought for its disloyalty.

  ‘Mrs Atkinson’s cupboard. Do you think she’d mind?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. If she cared about it, she’d have kept it with her, upstairs.’

  ‘So do you think it’s all right to put it on the bed? She won’t go mad with rage when she next sneaks in here to have a poke around when I’m out?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Is, it weighs a ton and it must be full of dust.’

  ‘I like it. It’s cosy.’

  ‘Besides, what do you mean about Mrs A. poking about?’

  ‘I’m sure she does. Everything looks wrong sometimes, when I come back. As if someone’s moved things, and been
very careful to put them back in the right places, but not quite careful enough. No, that’s not quite right – it’s as if someone’s moved them where they think things should be, not where we put them. She’s bound to have a key.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with her.’

  ‘No! No, Phil, you’re not to! You don’t have to live with her all the time. You don’t know what she’s like.’

  ‘I think you’re getting all this a bit out of proportion, Is.’

  ‘Do you?’

  She peered at him over the sheet, her eyes brilliant. How odd the coat looked from this angle, he thought. But it was just a trick of the light.

  ‘I’m keeping it,’ Isabel announced. ‘She can lump it. If she’s too mean to provide enough blankets in this morgue, what does she expect?’

  The word struck Philip in the stomach. But she doesn’t know, he thought, it’s just a word to her. She has never entered a morgue. This is our home, he wanted to protest, but instead he said, ‘We’re getting those logs at the weekend.’

  ‘I know.’

  Her eyes followed him as he put on his jacket and collected his case and coat. She couldn’t have looked at him more proudly if he were her well-brushed child, ready to go to school. He stood by the bed, wanting to kiss her, hesitating just too long. He loved to see the curve of Isabel’s body in the bed, but the coat blotted her out. She hadn’t even tried to get up, make a cup of tea, do anything.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

  ‘Will you be late?’

  ‘Probably,’ he said, and regretted it as soon as he was in the car.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN ISABEL WENT out into the hall with her shopping bag, the landlady was already there. Her hair was bundled in a scarf and she held a bottle of bleach in her hand, as if she were intending to clean the cloakroom. Isabel faced her.

  ‘I found a coat in one of the cupboards,’ she said.

  ‘What kind of coat would that be?’

  The woman must know perfectly well.

  ‘An RAF greatcoat. If it’s not in use, I’d like to put it on our bed. There aren’t enough blankets.’

  ‘I’ve never had any complaint about the blankets,’ said the landlady automatically. Her eyes were avid on Isabel. The odd thing was that she didn’t seem surprised. She looked satisfied, as if she had eaten something good.

  ‘Of course, if you need it yourself …’ said Isabel.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said the landlady slowly. ‘You’re welcome to it. I should have thrown it away years ago. It’s nothing but a nuisance to me.’

  How could it be a nuisance, thought Isabel in irritation, stuffed away at the back of a cupboard in a flat where you don’t even live? Mean old bitch.

  ‘Then we’ll use it,’ she said aloud.

  ‘You do that, Mrs Carey.’ It was the first time the landlady had given Isabel her name. How old she looked today; or not old exactly, but drawn, exhausted. She had done everything to obliterate her looks until she was scarcely a woman at all. Even the shoes she wore were brogues that could have belonged to a man. She rose up from them in a stiff grey column. Perhaps she’d been different when Mr Atkinson was alive. I should feel sorry for her, thought Isabel, but there was still that troubling glint of satisfaction in the landlady’s eyes.

  ‘Did you have RAF lodgers here during the war?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because of the coat.’

  ‘That coat’s got nothing to do with anything. They all lived out at the airfield. I should have thought you’d have known that.’ The landlady’s lips were tight. Why did everything make her so angry?

  ‘It must have been a worry, living so close to the minster during the bombing,’ probed Isabel. The great soaring bulk of the minster would have been a prime target for a Baedeker raid. Isabel had already heard that there’d been raids on the town. An airman had been killed on his bicycle, and then the cinema had caught it, but if they were aiming for the minster they had never succeeded in hitting it.

  ‘All that’s over and done with,’ said the landlady, and Isabel felt herself flush, as if caught out in ignoble curiosity.

  She went to the shops. She liked the market, with its rich heaps of vegetables and the freedom to walk from stall to stall, although the stall-keepers’ accents were so strong that often she could not make out what they were saying. Consequently she bought in a hurry, almost at random, to get the ordeal over. The other women with their shopping bags and baskets intimidated her. They were so sure of themselves, so sharp and sparing with words. When two or three of them had their heads together, Isabel walked past with her own head held high, certain that they were talking about her. She looked all wrong. Too young, too soft, too southern. Once, a big, foursquare, head-scarved woman rose up to defend Isabel when the fishmonger’s assistant picked out for her a particularly limp, dull-eyed pair of herring. ‘Now then, Joe, you don’t want to go giving her those, it’s the new doctor’s wife.’

  Isabel had not known how to thank her, torn as she was between relief and humiliation. Next time, she swore, she would stand up for herself. She nodded, feeling the colour wash over her face, and the woman said with rough kindness, ‘He’s not a bad lad, but you want to keep your eyes open.’ Girls of twelve knew better than Isabel, when their mothers sent them out with a shopping basket and charge of the purse.

  But at the grocer’s she was safe. The grocer’s wife was a Lancashire woman, eager-tongued and playful, who missed the friendliness of her native county. She was wasted behind the counter, Isabel thought. She could turn a story better than any of the Home Service’s stiff raconteurs. It was a quiet day and Isabel gave her order lingeringly. She was the only customer in the shop.

  ‘The town must have been busy during the war, with the RAF.’

  ‘Oh, it was. The airmen all drank at the Red Dragon; it was like the Wild West on a Friday night, and then when they were on ops it was a graveyard. If a crew didn’t come back you’d know about it, someone would tell you. They would leave their things in their lockers, you know, before they flew, their private things, and sometimes they’d said beforehand which friend was to have this or that. Watches and suchlike went to the family. It wasn’t only the RAF either, there were Poles, Canadians, French and I don’t know what else besides. I had a bunch of New Zealanders in here one day, every one of them over six foot. All the girls were after them, but there was more babbies than wedding rings came out of it.’

  ‘And they were here for the duration?’

  ‘Until Hitler threw his cap in.’

  A strange excitement rose in Isabel. ‘Were there many raids on the town?’

  ‘Your house had a near miss. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you look you can still see the crack in the side, even though it’s been filled in. Now then, the boy will be round with your order at six o’clock. He’s not been with us long and he’s as dim as a Toc H lamp, but he can find the minster, I should hope.’

  ‘My landlady never mentioned that the house had been damaged.’

  The grocer’s wife gave her a sharp look. ‘It was nothing to talk about, compared to what else went on. Besides, she wasn’t living there during the war. Not living, that’s to say … She was out at the farm then.’

  Isabel found she was leaning forward over the counter, like any gossiping woman. ‘I see,’ she breathed, willing the other to say more. The figure of the landlady hung in her mind, grey, taciturn, hostile. But perhaps she hadn’t always been so—

  The shop doorbell tinkled. Two women in battered tweed suits and hats entered, at their ease. Without breaking off their conversation they glanced around for service. Their gaze flicked over Isabel, as vague as it was imperious. No one would try to sell them a flabby herring. Instantly, the grocer’s wife was with them, inclining her head with a touch of obsequiousness that Isabel hadn’t seen in her before.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Huntley-Winterton, Mrs Crosby. How can I help you?’<
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  Isabel was forgotten. She slipped past the women and out of the shop. For a while she walked briskly, as if she had something to do. The houses were packed close together in the narrow streets, and there, at the end, lay the looming bulk of the minster. If she had children, Isabel thought, this is what they would see when they opened their eyes. Kirby Minster would be their native place. But would they ever be at home here?

  That night she slept heavily, under the greatcoat. Somewhere in the depths of sleep she heard the phone ringing, and then felt the heave of the bedclothes as Philip snatched the receiver from its cradle. His voice came at her in waves and then cold air trickled over her body as he got out of bed.

  ‘Phil?’

  ‘Hush. Go back to sleep. I’ve got to go out to a delivery.’

  ‘D’you wan’ tea—’

  ‘Go back to sleep, Is.’ His hand was on the covers, pressing them down around her. He liked to think of her curled and warm while he drove out through the deserted town.

  It was the coat that pressed her down. She would push it off her in a minute. It was too heavy. But sleep caught her again, melting her limbs, and she was gone deep into the wide skies of Suffolk with the smell of the salt marshes blowing in on the east wind.

  ‘Your parents will be home at Christmas,’ said her aunt’s voice, firm, practical and utterly to be trusted.

  The tapping wove itself into her dream. It was her cousin Charlie, tapping on the underside of the table while she did her maths homework, to annoy her. He had already finished his. Tap, tap, tap, went his fingers, louder and louder.

  ‘Stop it, Charlie,’ she said in her dream, but then she looked around and it wasn’t Charlie at all, there was a man sitting at the table with her and he had one long fingernail, yellow as bone and hooked over until it was almost double. It was the nail that tapped and the man who looked at her and smiled. Then, very slowly, and so that no one else could see, he winked at her.