The Soldier's Wife (10 page)

‘Exactly.'

‘What about you?'

‘What about me?'

George glanced up. ‘You want to talk about Afghanistan?'

Dan smiled again, easily. ‘Not really, Dad.'

‘Nothing to say to me?'

‘Nothing,' Dan said carefully, ‘that I need to say to you.'

‘Fair enough.'

‘Sorry.'

‘You can only do what comes naturally,' George said.

Dan picked his beer glass up. He said to it rather than to his father, ‘Not sure Alexa'd agree with you.'

‘No,' George said.

‘Has … has she been talking to you?'

‘A bit.'

‘And?'

George gave his son a steady look. ‘I'm no go-between, lad. But something's not right.'

‘Is that why you wanted to buy me a pint?'

‘It's always easier to talk,' George said, ‘if you have something to do.'

Dan gave a little shrug. ‘I don't need to talk.'

‘Ah.'

‘I just need to get all my folk off on leave, then I can focus.'

‘Fair enough,' George said again.

‘What did she say to you?'

George suddenly looked very like his own father. ‘I've told you, I'm not a go-between. You need to talk to her yourself.'

‘Drink up, Dad.'

‘I'm a slow drinker. Trained by your granddad.'

Dan leaned forward. ‘And don't – don't bloody meddle.'

George stared back at him. Then he lifted his glass, drank and set it down again. He said, as mildly as if he was commenting on the weather, ‘You never did like being in the wrong, did you?'

The digital clock on the front of the radio by her side of the bed read one forty-seven in angular green numbers. Beside her, on his back, one arm flung above his head and one down by his side, where it had slipped an hour ago from resting on her hip, Dan lay in apparently profound and tranquil sleep. Shortly after midnight, he had begun twitching and muttering in his sleep and had let out a yelp or two, and then laughed, and Alexa had put her arms round him and held him, and said the soothing and anodyne things she said to the twins, until he relaxed against her and then turned to lie
on his back, like a knight on a tomb, one hand on her hip. She had lain, still and wakeful, beside him for over an hour until the urge to turn over became irresistible and she had rolled gently away, feeling his hand slip limply from her and lie against her back as impersonally as if it had nothing to do with either of them.

Almost an hour further on into this long night and she was still awake. When Dan had been away and she couldn't sleep, Alexa had devised rules to prevent herself picturing a situation she could only imagine in a landscape she could only imagine and Dan, in some terrible state of mind, or body, or both, in the thick of it. But tonight, with his physical presence heavily beside her, no anxiety-prevention rules seemed to hold any sway over her scurrying mind. She should not have confided in George about the lost job. Or if she had, she should not have emphasized that she had decided not to take it because of the exigencies of Army life. Neither should she have described the visit to try and rescue Isabel, or blamed Dan's skewed priorities for the failure of that mission. George had stood beside her at the sink, drying the pans and utensils she had dumped, dripping, on to the draining board, and listened. She might have consoled herself by reminding herself that Dan had gone back to the garrison yet again, because of some trouble in the blocks, and that George could always have indicated that he didn't want to hear any more, but two in the morning was no time for consolation of any kind. She had abused George's affection for her, and she had been disloyal to Dan, and she felt terrible about both. Almost as terrible, in fact, as she did about not getting a job because she was in no position to accept it.

Tomorrow, driving George back to Salisbury, she would apologize, and ask him to forget what she had said as far as he was able. Put it down to the reunion, she'd say, we're all a
bit wired, in fact we were warned about it, how we'd all be a bit mad for a while. So sorry, George. I should never have opened my stupid mouth. I don't mean it. Of course I don't. Why should I? Look at all I've got. Except—

What was the definition of frustration? Being thwarted, certainly, being discouraged and dissatisfied, having a strong sense that one's capacities and capabilities were being wildly, exaggeratedly, hugely unfulfilled. Alexa took her eyes off the green numbers and shut them firmly. At this moment, lying there tense and agitated beside the slumbering Dan, she was the very epitome of frustration. I could, she thought, have
invented
the word.

George found Dan polishing his shoes by the kitchen sink.

‘What was the trouble last night?'

Dan was burnishing a toecap with brisk, practised strokes. ‘Oh, just some pre-leave happy high jinks.'

‘You can tell me,' George said. ‘I've been a soldier and I've been in charge of them. What took you behind the wire at nine o'clock at night?'

‘Drugs,' Dan said shortly.

‘Drugs?'

‘Well, we're not sure yet. But some nonsense with drugs, maybe. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors, of course. Infuriating.'

George picked up a yellow duster and offered it to Dan. ‘Your granddad still bones his.'

‘You need to, to get the best shine.'

‘Dan?'

‘Dad,' Dan said, brushing on.

‘I want you to take me back to the bus. Not Alexa.'

Dan gave a little grimace to his shoe. ‘Sorry, Dad, no can—'

‘Yes, you can, lad.'

Dan stopped brushing. ‘Excuse me?'

‘You can take an hour off to drive me to the bus. That girl of yours has done it all so far. I'm your father, not hers.'

‘But I'm afraid—'

George put the duster down. ‘We need to leave at two forty.'

Dan stared at his shoe.

‘Don't tell me,' George said, ‘that the sky'll fall in on the battery in just one hour.'

‘So,' Dan said, swinging the car out into the main road, ‘do you want to get whatever it is off your chest?'

George, zipped into the blue windproof jacket he had been wearing as long as Dan could remember, said nothing. He sat composedly in the passenger seat, gazing out at the late-autumn hills through the windscreen, his hands relaxed on his thighs.

Dan tried again. ‘Well?'

‘I wanted to ask you something.'

Dan changed gear, accelerated past a van with energy and changed back down again. ‘Fire away.'

George took his time.

‘It's hard, coming back—'

‘Oh please, Dad, don't start that again. And don't say “When I was in the Falklands”.'

‘I wasn't going to. I wasn't thinking about the Falklands, even.'

‘Well,' Dan said sharply, ‘what then? What were you thinking about?'

George said dreamily, ‘Alexa.'

‘Alexa! What about Alexa? What
has
she been saying to you?'

George glanced out of the side window. ‘Oh, it's not that. It's not about what she's said and done. It's about you. It's about what you think of her.'

Dan gave an angry little bark of laughter. ‘You know bloody well what I think of her.'

George turned his head so that he could look at his son. He said calmly, ‘Your granddad would say that as usual I've made myself as clear as mud. What I meant was, how did you think about her when you were away?'

There was a brief silence and then Dan said, ‘I missed her.'

‘Course you did. But how did you think about her? What part was she playing in what you were doing?'

‘What on earth do you mean?'

‘You know what I mean,' George said steadily.

‘D'you – d'you mean did I think what I was doing out there had some – some relevance to her?'

‘Sort of.'

Dan looked sideways at his father and grinned. ‘You are one weird old bastard.'

‘Maybe. But I'd like an answer, all the same.'

Dan said, ‘We discuss this sometimes, Gus and me. We talk about – well, about this protection thing.'

‘Protection?'

‘Of Alexa. All our girls. Keeping them safe.'

‘Of course. And?'

‘What do you mean, and?'

‘You don't want them messy,' George said, ‘do you? When you're in the middle of a big mess on ops, you want everything at home to be pure, don't you? Pure as driven snow. That way you can cope, can't you? Imagining all that purity back home that you're defending. Them being pure and innocent makes it all worthwhile.'

Dan glanced sideways again. ‘Heavens, Dad, I never thought—'

‘You never asked. I never thought to mention it. Didn't need to. But it rings a bell?'

‘A whole peal of them.'

‘Trouble is,' George said, ‘the families only stay innocent if they don't know anything. And if they don't know anything they can't talk to you. And then lines of communication go down.'

They slowed for a roundabout. Peering right and left, Dan said tensely, ‘So this is, in fact, a bollocking for not treating Alexa the way you think I should treat her.'

‘Trouble is,' George said again, ignoring him, ‘that if you treat families as innocents, you end up treating them like children. And that's no good for communication. It may be all very well for
you
to want to protect them because it suits some high falutin' ideas you have, but it's not so good for them.'

‘Enough, Dad.'

‘Talk to her, boy.
Talk
to her. Tell her what you've been through. Ask her what she's been through. That's all.'

Dan changed gears badly and the car briefly rocked and jerked. ‘I am
certainly
not telling Alexa some of the stuff that goes on. I never have. I never will.'

‘You're patronizing her—'

‘I am
not
!' Dan shouted. ‘I am not! I am protecting her from stuff that will only give her nightmares – images of dead kids, betrayals, accidents. I'm protecting her from all the ugly stuff, just as I protected her from all the wild stuff when I was a junior officer and—'

‘She's a grown woman, Dan.'

‘That's just it! That's it exactly! What grown woman wants to know about a bunch of guys getting blind drunk together, getting naked together, having jerking-off competitions in the mess together—'

‘Don't talk disgusting, Daniel.'

Dan beat the steering wheel with the heel of his left hand in exasperation. ‘I give up.'

‘What?'

‘Talking to you. Trying to get you to understand. Sometimes it amazes me you've ever been a soldier.'

‘Insults'll get you nowhere.'

‘But Dad,' Dan said, ‘are you so besotted with Alexa that you can't even remember what you felt about trying to shield someone like her from knowing something that will only distress them because they can't do anything about it?'

They were entering the outskirts of Salisbury. Dan slowed the car until the speedometer needle was trembling on thirty.

‘That wasn't my point,' George said.

‘Oh my God. And your point was?'

‘It's not about protection. It's about getting through to her. If you can't tell her anything, then ask her how she is.'

‘I
know
how she is. Finding it bloody difficult to have me back, and no wonder.'

‘Just ask her,' George said.

‘What?'

‘Ask her how she is. Ask her what she's thinking. What's been going on.' He looked ahead. ‘Just drop me here. I'll walk the last stretch.'

‘No, Dad, let me—'

George put his hand on the car door handle. ‘I'll get out here. Stop the car.'

Dan slowed the car to a halt outside a small newsagent's shop.

‘I'll pick up a paper. Crossword for the journey.'

‘Dad?'

‘Yes?'

‘I'm sorry I shouted. You know what she means to me and I know I'm hopeless right now, but I'll make it up to her, promise.'

George opened the passenger door. He turned back to look at his son. ‘Mind you do.'

‘I will.'

‘You're a good lad, but you need to do a bit of thinking.'

‘OK.'

George reached out and patted Dan's shoulder briefly. ‘
Talk
to her,' he said.

‘H
ello, stranger!' Alexa said, delighted. Kate Melville stood on the doorstep. She was wearing a tailored suit and sunglasses, and was carrying a huge bunch of mop-headed chrysanthemums. She took off her sunglasses and smiled.

‘You look wonderful!' Alexa said.

Kate held out the flowers. ‘Bronze, please note, not white, so you didn't think of Chinese funerals. How are you, babe?'

Alexa laughed. ‘Up, down, round and round. You know. Where've you been? These are gorgeous.'

‘Working,' Kate said. She stepped into the house and kissed Alexa.

‘To some effect, I hear,' Alexa said.

‘Well, it's nice to see one's efforts repaid a bit.'

‘Gus is so proud.'

Kate looked her up and down. ‘You're thinner.'

‘Never a bad thing.'

‘Much thinner.'

‘Even better. Coffee?'

‘A quick one,' Kate said. ‘I've a train to catch.'

‘Back to London?'

‘It's Tuesday. Back-to-London day. How are the children?'

‘Two good,' Alexa said, leading the way into the kitchen, ‘one not.'

‘Isabel?'

‘Isabel.'

‘This wretched boarding thing—'

Alexa put down the flowers and picked up the kettle. She said, without turning, ‘I thought you liked the boarding thing. I thought you said the children loved it.'

‘I think they do. Or at least they make the best of it because they know they've got to. But I'd love them to be at day schools. I really would. Good London day schools.'

Alexa indicated a chair and put two mugs on the table. She said, ‘Dreamland. Like the house I fantasize about.'

‘Don't you get sick of that?'

‘What?'

‘Fantasizing about what you can't have because the Army is just so inflexible?'

Alexa switched on the kettle and came to peer into Kate's face. ‘Are you OK?'

Kate avoided her gaze. ‘So so. This wasn't good, was it?'

‘What wasn't?'

‘This homecoming. They only want to see each other.'

‘That'll wear off.'

Kate looked directly at her, suddenly. ‘Don't kid yourself.'

‘Kate!'

‘I'm just fed up.'

‘You've hardly given Gus a chance,' Alexa said, sitting down in the chair next to Kate's. ‘You've hardly been home.'

‘What do you know?'

‘Enough. Dan's never here because he's always consoling Gus. Because you're not there.'

‘Whose side are you on?' Kate demanded.

Alexa said unhappily, ‘I really don't know.'

‘Then don't go for me.'

‘I wasn't.'

Kate stood up. She straightened her suit jacket and said, almost melodramatically, ‘I'll go.'

‘But you've only just come.'

‘I don't want,' Kate said, ‘to be confronted by any more toe-the-Army-line stuff.'

‘I was only trying to put across another point of view.'

‘Dan's.'

‘Kate,' Alexa said, getting up too, ‘what is the
matter
with you?'

Kate picked up her sunglasses. ‘I thought you might give me a bit of a steer.'

‘On what? On Gus? I haven't seen Gus, apart from so briefly—'

‘Sorry,' Kate said. ‘I shouldn't have come.'

‘You came for a reason.'

‘Not really.'

‘But one you've decided not to tell me about. One you've had second thoughts about.'

‘Alexa,' Kate said, ‘you're lovely but you're kind of brainwashed.' She put her sunglasses on and turned her blank dark gaze on Alexa. ‘Gus says you are having the head honchos to dinner, even.'

‘Dan asked.'

‘Course he did. And you said yes.'

Alexa said, suddenly furious, ‘And you'd have refused? If Gus had asked you?'

Kate looked away, a half-smile on her face. ‘Probably.'

‘Jesus, Kate—'

‘It must be nice,' Kate said in a tone of mockery, ‘to congratulate yourself on being such an excellent Army wife.'

‘Stop it!'

‘Even helping Dan to get promotion.'

‘Stop it!' Alexa shouted. ‘What on earth's got into you?'

Kate picked her bag up slowly and slung it deliberately over her shoulder. She said, in a more normal voice, ‘I just can't believe in it any more.'

‘In what? In the Army? In Gus?'

Kate said, her head bent, ‘Any of it.'

Alexa took a deep breath. ‘Is that what you came to say today? Armed with flowers, you came to tell me you'd had enough? Not two weeks after Gus gets home?'

There was a pause. Kate fiddled with the clasp on her bag. ‘No.'

‘Well, then. Well?'

Kate said, more sadly, ‘It's – it's all so difficult.'

Alexa snorted. ‘Tell me about it!'

‘I'm sorry,' Kate said, ‘I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't take it out on you. Sorry. I didn't mean—' She stopped.

Alexa turned and picked up the flowers and held them out. ‘You have them.'

‘No, please.'

Alexa shook the flowers with emphasis. ‘
Take
them. And come back when you're not so crazy.'

Kate stepped forward, not looking at Alexa, and retrieved the flowers. She laid them along her forearm as if she was cradling a baby. ‘Thanks,' she said, and then, with a short half-laugh, ‘
If
.'

When the telephone had rung mid-morning, Elaine had supposed that it would be her friend Verity, calling to confirm matinée tickets for the National Theatre. Verity had said she would ring before midday, and she was the kind of person who telephoned when she said she would, as well as being the kind of person who made arrangements, down to the smallest detail, months in advance of any activity, and became personally offended at the mere suggestion of any subsequent change. Plans made with Verity could be relied
upon with utter confidence to work, but also carried an undertone of menace.

‘You wouldn't,' Verity was inclined to say if her proposals were met with any hint of a desire for modification, ‘want to let me down, would you?'

But the call had not been from Verity, but from Alexa. An Alexa apparently standing in her kitchen surrounded by cookery books and lists, in a state of uncharacteristic turmoil.

‘But, darling,' Elaine said, not having done more than assemble a meal for a bridge four in a decade, ‘what's to faze you about supper for six?'

Alexa had said, too vehemently for the situation, that Elaine didn't understand.

‘What don't I understand? The etiquette of having a colonel and a brigadier for dinner?'

No, Alexa said, yes, well both, really, and on top of everything – she had stopped mid-sentence, as if she had suddenly flung her hand up over her mouth.

‘Everything, darling?'

In a more measured voice, Alexa said she'd just rung for some menu suggestions. Things that looked as if you'd spent ages on them when you hadn't really, because you hadn't got ages to spend, and anyway were feeling so distracted and preoccupied with things—

‘What things?'

‘Oh,' Alexa said, sounding on the verge of tears, ‘just the domestic round. You know …'

‘I don't,' Elaine said, truthfully. ‘Not like you do. I never have. Where's Dan?'

Alexa said neutrally that he was up at the offices.

‘Again?'

‘There's some bother with drugs. They did some random testing on some of the soldiers and two of Dan's lot tested
positive. They swear they took nothing, they insist they just got the fumes from other people at a party. It's really – hard for Dan.'

‘Is it?'

‘He's told them he'll stand by them if they tell him what happened. But they won't.'

‘Oh dear,' Elaine said. She was about to say, sympathetically, ‘It's always something, darling, isn't it?' and checked herself. Instead she said, ‘What news of Isabel?'

‘Oh, Mum.'

‘What, darling?'

Alexa said, through sudden tears, ‘She's just – just enduring it. Sends pitiful little messages about being fine. I feel so
awful
.'

‘It isn't your fault.'

‘It is! It is! If I hadn't married into this life, Isabel wouldn't be suffering as she is!'

‘She might be suffering because you weren't as happy as you are with Dan.'

There was a prolonged silence, not broken even by sniffs from Alexa's end of the line.

Elaine said, ‘Darling? Are you there?'

‘Do you think,' Alexa said, more resolutely, ‘that avocado something is too much of a cliché?'

Elaine grasped the phone tightly. ‘Would you like me to come down?'

‘What?'

‘Shall I come down to Larkford and help you? I easily could.'

Alexa said carefully, ‘I – don't think so.'

‘Why not?'

‘We'll come to London when Dan's on leave.'

‘But this supper party.'

‘I'll manage.'

‘Alexa,' Elaine said, putting on her reading glasses for emphasis, ‘you rang me because you
weren't
managing.'

‘I am now.'

‘Despite Isabel? And Dan?'

Alexa muttered something.

‘What?'

‘I said,' Alexa said, ‘I shouldn't have rung.'

Elaine replied reproachfully, ‘I'd like to have helped, you know.'

‘I don't mean to be ungrateful.'

‘No.'

‘I just rang,' Alexa said firmly, as if she had never wavered, ‘for a few recipes, you know?'

When she had put the phone down, Elaine went into her bedroom and sat at the dressing-table Morgan had given her when they were first married, because, he said, it was an exact replica of the one his mother had always used. That knowledge had, Elaine recalled, been violently irritating to her forty years ago, but now, as with most irritating things, her reaction to it had mellowed. It was as if, she sometimes thought, she no longer had the energy to resent things and disapprove of things and battle against contempt. Even the soft sepia photograph of his carefully feminine mother that Morgan still kept on his chest of drawers was no longer an annoyance. If she found Verity's behaviour over theatre dates a real hindrance, she surely wouldn't go on putting up with it, would she? Wasn't it, really, just a measure of the calmer waters of being older, of liking routines and familiarity, and even – dare one acknowledge it – the serene self-indulgence of monotony?

She sat down at her dressing-table, on its matching stool, and surveyed her reflection in the triple mirror between two lamps made of silvered cupids that Morgan had found on a holiday in Venice. Alexa had not inherited her face,
but Alexa's little Tassy had, as had Flora, in a more blurred version. Elaine did not feel she knew the twins very well, any more than she knew Dan, or the child Isabel had grown into since she was sent away to school. When she thought about them, or even more emphatically about Alexa, all the calm and surrendering thoughts about her civilized and well-managed daily round in the Marylebone Road were exploded by immediate agitation. She laid both hands flat across her stomach, pressing hard against her neat, discreet merino cardigan. Alexa had sounded all over the place on the phone, distressed and uneven and as defensive as ever. Elaine stared at herself in the mirror. Her face seemed to be melting, dissolving, blurring between the cool, gleaming orbs of her pearl earrings.

Oh my goodness, Elaine thought, letting go of her stomach and snatching a tissue from their lace-covered box, oh my goodness, I'm going to cry.

Julian Bailey turned to smile his handsome, direct, soldierly smile at Alexa. ‘Delicious,' he said. ‘And I never eat pudding as a rule. Ask Claire!'

He looked startlingly different, Alexa thought, out of uniform. They all did, of course, to a certain degree, but Julian Bailey, as spare and slight as a jockey, was an altogether changed physical proposition in corduroy trousers (rust-coloured) and a cashmere V-neck (navy blue) than he was in battledress and side hat with his hardly enormous feet, now shod in immaculate suede loafers, magnified and masculinized by Army boots.

He was clever, everyone said, extremely clever. He wore rimless glasses, behind which his blue eyes shone with great intensity, and he had a reputation for reading and an encyclopaedic knowledge of opera. His wife, Claire, to whom he deferred with elaborate public gallantry, was built on the same
scale and balanced his intellectual powers with formidable practicality and capability. Alexa suspected that despite making all the conventional noises of delighted approval, Claire would have guessed that the sauce on the chicken contained a can of condensed soup because Alexa had only discovered at the last moment that she had forgotten to buy cream. Claire was wearing tailored trousers, not jeans, and a white shirt under a velvet waistcoat embroidered in gold thread, which Julian had brought home from Afghanistan. She had gold stud earrings, no other jewellery but her wedding band, clear skin and freshly washed hair. The effect on Alexa and, plainly, on Mary Mackenzie, the Colonel's wife and something of a professional pretty woman, was to make them feel they had put on the wrong clothes and too much make-up.

Alexa smiled back. ‘Good. So glad you liked it. A terrific apple year, of course.'

‘Of course,' Julian Bailey said, still smiling. ‘When we left Helmand, it was apricot time. You'd be amazed how beautiful the countryside out there can be. Mountains with these lovely valleys between, filled with little white farms and apricot orchards. Under a blue sky, quite fabulous. I expect Dan has told you.'

Alexa glanced down the table. Dan was leaning towards Mary Mackenzie to refill her glass. She was saying ‘No, no,' but not really stopping him, and he was smiling and pouring, and Claire Bailey was holding out her own glass in mock indignation at Dan's not noticing that it was empty.