The Greatcoat Read online

  Soon she understood that it took him this time to come back to himself, when he came to her straight from a debriefing. The racket of the Lanc was still going through him, as if he’d been welded to the throttles and couldn’t disengage. She saw the vibration in his fingers. She stepped forward and put a glass into his hand. Sometimes he had a beer, but more often it was gin, because that worked more quickly. The gin jumped in the glass and then he swallowed it down and everything began to level off.

  After the first couple of days, she realised that she would have to be careful. Philip had noticed the level going down in the gin bottle. It worried him that Isabel didn’t go out more. As far as he could tell from the descriptions she gave of her days, they seemed to consist of shopping, walks and cooking. Whenever he suggested something she might do, or join, she evaded him.

  When Philip had first known Isabel, he’d loved to watch her read. He would see a smile flicker across her face when she got to a passage that amused her, and hear her sigh as she tucked her feet under her and turned the page. But her French novel had lain open at the same place for days. He couldn’t read French, but he could read page numbers. What did she do with herself all day?

  ‘Cleaning and cooking,’ she said.

  ‘You could get a charlady,’ he said, trying out a word he’d heard other people use. His mother had cleaned every inch of the house herself. ‘We can afford it.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone here!’

  ‘It would make life easier for you.’

  ‘It’s bad enough, the way everyone watches me in the shops.’

  She spoke sharply, in a new way. She looked different, too. A little thinner, he thought, but not ill. In fact she looked marvellous. During his training, he’d come across doctors who drank and hid it. But what on earth would Isabel be doing with a bottle of gin? Pouring herself a glass with her lunchtime sandwich? He couldn’t picture it. But there was the evidence. He would raise it with her tactfully.

  Isabel laughed at him – a real laugh, which made him realise he hadn’t heard her laugh for days. She told him it was his imagination. So there was the fact of the gin bottle, and there was Isabel laughing with bright eyes and clean breath. He wasn’t going to pursue it. He would believe her.

  The next day, Isabel took a train to York and bought another bottle of Gordon’s. It was too risky to buy spirits in Kirby Minster, in an off-licence where someone might recognise her. In York, she was free. Ordinarily she would have spent the whole day in the city, wandering the narrow streets, visiting shops and the museum in blissful anonymity, but she was afraid to stay away from the flat for too long. She thought of Alec tapping at the window. With the gin wrapped in brown paper at the bottom of her shopping bag, she took the next train home. Cunningly, she poured half an inch of gin into the old gin bottle, and then the next day half an inch more. From now on, each time the level sank, she would restore it.

  She’d caught Philip with the gin bottle in his hand, holding it up to the light. Instantly, she knew how stupid it had been to try and fool him. He was far too precise for that. She might have accepted, vaguely, that the level in a bottle might come and go: never Philip. He turned to her and his eyes had a hot, hurt look in them, as if he’d caught her out in behaviour that violated his idea of her. Suddenly she was afraid of what he might look like, if he ever knew that she had deceived him. A man like Philip …

  ‘Do I look like a secret drinker?’ she asked, trying to make light of it. He regarded her. His gaze travelled over her skin, her eyes, her hair, in the way she had loved when they were courting.

  ‘No,’ he said flatly, ‘you don’t. You look very well.’

  She was lit up from inside, and she couldn’t hide it. Her eyes glowed and her pale skin was flushed. He looked at her and she looked back at him: neither yielded. They were two separate people, intolerably close.

  In bed that night he said suddenly, ‘Isabel.’

  ‘What?’ she asked drowsily, although she was wide awake.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘No.’ She lay very still, waiting, but she didn’t think he had fallen asleep. He was waiting, like her. The landlady, for once, must be sleeping. The bleak, dreary darkness of the flat seemed to gather itself like a blanket over their bed. I don’t want to be here, she thought fiercely. I’ve got to get away.

  ‘Philip?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Philip?’ she said again, a little louder.

  Still no reply, but he was awake, she was sure of it. She listened to his steady breathing, and for an instant she hated him with all her heart, because he was allowing her to fall like this, away from him. Very convenient, said a cold little voice inside her. Blame your husband, why don’t you?

  Isabel never asked Alec where he was stationed. When he mentioned the airfield she nodded as if she knew it well. It might have been any one of the dozens all over the east of England. He had a motorbike, he said, and one day when it was warmer he would take her for a ride on it. They would ride out to the coast.

  ‘If you won’t be afraid.’

  ‘No, I shan’t be afraid.’

  ‘Have you ridden pillion before?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’ll be fine. All you have to do is hang on to me.’

  But another afternoon he said to her, ‘We’ll have to get out on the old bike again, Is. You remember those geese?’

  She smiled but did not answer. In her mind a skein of geese flew with steady wingbeats, from east to west. She’d seen them many times, on their migrations. Now she saw herself too, with Alec, raised up on a bank at the edge of a marshy field. They shaded their eyes against the sunset as they tracked the flight of the geese. At first it was like watching a film, but as she watched it the images entered her and became part of her. They were Isabel’s memories now. She was no longer quite certain of what had really happened. Had she been out on the bike with Alec? How long had he been coming to the house? In a clear, lit part of her mind she remembered the first time, the knocking on the window, her own cowardice, and then how she’d had sight of him on the other side of the glass. But the rest of her mind was filling with memories that came from somewhere outside her own life. They were crowding in and there was only that small, lit point, always growing smaller, to tell her that they were not her own. It was because of Alec. He was doing it. Or was it? She didn’t know. Philip … she clenched her hands and dug her nails in. She would hurt herself and break the dream. She would think of Philip. Yes, she could do it if she wanted, she could still fill her mind with her husband: there he was, his dark, carved profile, the lift of his chin. But even when she summoned him up, he wouldn’t turn to her. He didn’t even know she was there. He had pretended to be asleep! He couldn’t help her now.

  Alec was smiling at her. She gave way and let the surge of those other memories enter her, and become her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the geese. That was a good day, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Promise me you’ll come out on the old bike again?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She may be clapped out, but she really goes,’ he said. All at once his smile faded. He released her and stepped back. ‘What time is it?’

  She looked down at her wrist but she wasn’t wearing her watch. ‘Hang on.’ She went into the kitchen to look at the old car clock, and called back, ‘It’s all right, Alec, you’ve got plenty of time.’

  He didn’t answer. Even as she turned, she knew he’d already gone. There was his glass, there was his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, still smouldering. Her hands twisted in frustration. What was he playing at?

  * * *

  After a while Isabel grew calmer. She was getting used to it, she supposed. Alec was staying for longer each time, she was quite sure of that. After that long first visit, his time with her had shrunk to seconds, then grown again to minutes. Today, they’d had half an hour at least. How could he stay longer? He had to get back to the airfield. She thought
of all the bits of time that Alec had spent in the flat. If only it were possible to sweep them together, and see what shape they made. Sometimes it seemed to her that it was the same day, over and over.

  Alec barely touched her. She put her hand over his and its trembling grew worse, but after a while it stopped. She longed to walk towards him as he came in from the hall, unbuttoning his greatcoat. She wanted to press herself into him, inside the coat, so that it would enfold them both. Then, she thought, they would be together. But he was too quick for her, and it never happened. Each time, he walked straight through to the bedroom. Each time, she took his greatcoat, folded it and laid it on the bedroom chair.

  She offered him food, but he was never hungry. He said he’d be having his pre-op meal later. ‘Eggs and bacon. Does that make your mouth water?’ he asked her teasingly. ‘What are you having – snoek pie?’ He wouldn’t even take a slice of the sponge cake she’d baked for Philip. He drank gin, and sometimes a half-pint mug of tea, and he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

  Sometimes, in the early days, he would be gone after the first drink and cigarette. But one afternoon she understood that she should sit down on the bed beside him, and put her arm around him as he stared down at his knees. He smiled without looking at her, and leaned his head sideways until it rested on her shoulder. It was a swift movement and so full of intimacy that she did not know how to respond. But it was only for a second and then he was back in position, looking down, deep in thought. Then he took her hand, weighed it, rocked it within his own. She felt the heat of his body, burning into hers.

  It was the next day that they went out to the airfield. She was washing a jumper when the doorbell rang. It was a cold, bright day and the wintry sun dazzled her as she opened the door. There he was, and there was the motorbike behind him, propped against the kerb. He didn’t seem to care about anyone seeing him today. He was wearing his flying jacket, a leather helmet with a strap under his chin, and goggles pushed up on top of his head.

  ‘I’ve borrowed some clobber for you from Syd,’ he said, and held out a second, smaller jacket and leather helmet.

  ‘That skirt’s no good,’ he said, looking at her, ‘and I couldn’t get Syd to part with his trousers. What else have you got?’

  She was ready in ten minutes, dressed in a pair of tartan trews she’d had since she was sixteen, with Philip’s heaviest winter trousers over them and rolled up. Syd’s jacket was warm, and almost fitted her.

  ‘Irvin jacket, airman, for the use of,’ said Alec.

  ‘Syd must be small.’

  ‘He’s a midget. Just as well – you want a rear gunner who’ll fit in the turret.’

  ‘I suppose you do,’ said Isabel.

  She was sitting behind Alec, with her arms around his waist. Her feet were on the footrests.

  ‘We’ll go as far as the airfield,’ he said. ‘There isn’t time to go to the coast today. Not too cold?’

  She shook her head as he glanced back over his shoulder. He looked quite different out of doors. Younger, as if a heavy weight had slid off him. He loved the bike, she could see that. He seemed to think she already knew how to ride pillion, so she didn’t ask questions. It would be easy enough to hold on to him.

  ‘Remember that time I got her up to seventy-five?’

  ‘Not today,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Not with you on the back, any day.’

  At that moment two women rounded the corner. They were Janet Ingoldby and a younger woman whom Isabel didn’t know. They were deep in conversation, walking slowly, heads close. For a second Isabel felt a pang. This woman, her face warm with friendship, was a Janet Ingoldby she didn’t know. Immediately, the thought was pushed away by fear. Janet mustn’t see her. She would recognise Isabel, even in this get-up. She would see her on the back of a motorbike, with her arms around Alec’s waist, and Dr Ingoldby would hear about it, and then Philip – at that moment, Janet Ingoldby raised her head and looked directly at Isabel. She was smiling as she made some point to her companion. In fact, she was pointing; pointing at Isabel’s house, saying something Isabel couldn’t quite hear. She had looked straight past the motorbike and the two people on it. Isabel ducked her head down to hide her face. She saw nothing now but the grain of Alec’s jacket. He kicked down on the starter and the engine fired. The vibration went through Isabel and she held close to him. Janet Ingoldby would never see her now. As they rode off she risked a backward glance. Neither woman was looking her way. The noise of the bike hadn’t disturbed them at all.

  Once they were out of town, Alec opened the throttle. The bike leaped forward, bare hedges rushed at her, the earth tipped as the bike took the bends in the lane. She was drowning in the noise of the engine. She had no choice but to mould her body against Alec’s and try to lean into the bends. But she was afraid. She could sense her own fear pouring through her and into Alec, breaking the bond between them. He couldn’t ride if she sat stiff like this. She heard a noise in her own throat, a gasp or a protest. He was uncertain too now. She felt the bike slow and he turned again, taking his eyes off the road to glance at her. It was going to end in failure. He was going to know she didn’t belong here, on the back of his motorbike, in the middle of …

  He was going to find her out.

  No. That mustn’t happen. Isabel breathed out, long and slow. There was nothing to fear. The lane curved to the left and she gave way to it, so close to Alec that there was no room for anything to go wrong between them. As he leaned, so she leaned. They were one creature with the same noise and vibration going through them both. The bike came up. They were out of the bend, back on the straight. She moved a little so that she could see over his shoulder. The white lane flew towards them, overgrown where it had once been wide enough for two trucks to pass at speed. Alec opened the throttle and they went faster.

  She wanted to go on, past the airfield and all the way to the coast, but she felt the bike slowing. He was right; there wouldn’t be time. She saw him raise his right hand, greeting someone she couldn’t see.

  The broken fence stretched out ahead of them. At the entrance to the airfield, the guardhouse guarded nothing. She could see everything that was invisible to him, although it was a quarter of a mile distant: blackened weeds, split concrete, gaps where the wind blew. Alec pulled over by a gate at the entrance to a farm track.

  ‘I’d be pushing it if I tried to get you through the guardhouse,’ he said. He stripped off his gloves. ‘Are you frozen, darling?’

  The word went through her. Philip never used endearments. She was Is, or Isabel; he hadn’t been brought up to sweetheart a woman, and she understood that to him it was both unnatural and unnecessary. They were married. They lived together. He entered her body. That was the reality, not words.

  It was strange to think of Philip but find him still so distant, as if he lived in another world. Or as if he were lost in a fog. Yes, that was it. One of those fogs that rolled in from the east, with the smell of the sea in it, in spite of the distance. Such a fog would quickly cover everything.

  Alec was sharp, and close. He was standing by the leafless hedge, lighting a cigarette. She watched the smoke and drew in the scent of tobacco. Around his mouth there were grooved lines, too deep for so young a man. In the bottom of the hedge, a thrush rustled and then was still. She saw the bead of its eye, watching them.

  ‘What can you see?’ she asked, talking to the bird. She couldn’t deceive herself any more. Perhaps the bird saw a woman on her own, on a winter’s afternoon, talking to herself. Perhaps it saw nothing. Alec hadn’t noticed that Isabel had spoken. He was unlatching the gate.

  ‘Come on,’ he said urgently. He pushed open the gate for her and they went through it, picking off thorns from last year’s brambles. She stepped carefully over the ridges of the plough, following Alec. A track, very faint, like a long abandoned footpath, ran to the next corner, where there was a broken-down stile. Alec climbed onto it, and held out his hand to pull her up. He seemed not to see that
the wood was rotten. It held under her weight, and he caught her hands as she jumped down.

  She saw now where he was heading. There was a hut in the corner of the next field. Maybe it had been a shelter once, but now the door hung open and the corrugated iron roof was eaten away by rust. He was leading her towards it. Even in winter, the hut was hidden from the road by the hedge and steep bank. From here you could not even imagine the airfield. There could be nothing for miles but fields in their winter slumber, their ploughed earth hardened by last night’s frost. It was very still.

  ‘Here,’ he said, and stood aside as if holding open the door for her, even though it hung off its hinges. She ducked and went into the hut.

  The air seemed warmer inside. There was something soft underfoot. Alec came inside too and there was light from the doorway. The floor here was also rotten, and the old carpet that had once covered it had sunk into the pulp of the wood, so that it seemed to be woven into it. The carpet had been red.

  It was dry enough inside, and smelled of earth. There’d be spiders and beetles, but there was no reason for rats to settle here.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Alec. She saw that he was smiling. There was so little space inside the hut that they stood together awkwardly. A shadow passed over his face. He glanced around quickly. Suddenly, naked fear seemed to possess him. Isabel backed towards the door, but he put out his hand and held her.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he murmured rapidly, ‘Don’t go, Issy. It’s quite safe. I’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘But what’s the matter?’

  ‘I couldn’t see the mattress. I thought someone must have moved it.’ She knew at once that he had seen what she saw: the carpet rotted into the rotting wood, rust and decay. But he was strong. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, pointing down, ‘there it is. Mattress, Alec and Issy, for the use of. Must have been a trick of the light. My God, the things you see, when you’ve been staring into the dark for hours … When they send up a scarecrow you think it’s some other poor bastard’s kite …’